


Of Mice and Monsters

by olivemartini



Series: The Only Way It Ends Happy is in an AU (Game of Thrones Edition) [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Modern AU, Protective Jon, Protective Robb, Theon's dad is crappy, domestic abuse, slowburn, some homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-11 11:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 68,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12934386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: "You'll ruin him,"  Theon's father promises, after he had stayed too late at the Stark's house and he demanded to know where Theon had been.  And Theon couldn't really argue, not with the guilt rising in his throat and the want in his stomach, not with how he had sunk his hooks into Robb and was threatening to pull him down in the dirt where Theon belonged.  He didn't want to do that, he didn't want to ruin him more than he already had, but he couldn't quite convince himself to walk away, either.





	1. Chapter 1

1.

When Theon and Robb spoke for the first time, it was because of an accident.

Theon had been put into the slow reading group on purpose, stuck with kids a year lower than him who had the right to stumble over simple words and stutter out their sentences.  The news of Theon needing "help" hadn't made his father happy, and it when he walked into that classroom for the first time, it was with the memory of shattered glass and bellowed threats clinging to his back.  And he didn't much fancy the idea, being the only fourth grader stuck in the with the third graders, and he was sure that he was going to be teased something awful once the other kids found out.

 _Stupid,_ they would call him.  Theon was alright with handling playground bullies, but he didn't think he could take that word being sneered at him everyday for the rest of his life, not when it wasn't fair.  All these other kids got to go home to moms and dads who pushed aside their wants and needs to help them muddle through confusing paragraphs or make sense of the riddle that was math homework, but all Theon had was himself and the occasional night pepping a tired Asha with questions.  He wasn't stupid, he just didn't have the same time to spend on silly books as they did, was all.

So all in all, he didn't want to go there, didn't want the knowledge of where he had to spend every Thursday recess spreading around the school, but in the end it was the best, because that was the first time he met Robb Stark.

 

2.

Robb hadn't minded that Theon was a whole year older than him and still reading at a third grade level, but that might have just been because Robb was so entranced with the idea of having an older to friend to realize why they had met in the first place.  But Theon knew why Robb was there- the third graders that came were advanced, so both them and Theon met in the middle, one group to slow and the other too fast.  Robb was one of the smart kids, always nudging Theon under the table and whispering the answers to him.  It hadn't bothered him, so long as Robb thought that Theon was just as smart, so that was what made it so awful when he and Robb were standing under the swingset and a group of kids came up and started telling Robb exactly how stupid he was.   _So bad at reading,_ they had said, and even years later the words would be so easy to recall it was like they were burned into his skin.   _So bad he had to hang out with little snotnosed third graders._

Robb had only stared from them to Theon, and Theon couldn't take knowing what his reaction would be, so he turned around and fled to the farthest corner of the playground, the one that was all dry as dust dirt and weeds winding through the chain linked fence.  He had started crying without knowing it, so when Robb followed, he had to wipe away his tears with the heel of his palm and pretend that he wasn't.

"You can't read?" Theon wanted to punch him, because that's what people in his family did, but Robb was different.  Robb was pretending not to see his tears and looking at him with those too-blue eyes of his, and he didn't seemed bothered by the idea of having a stupid friend in the slightest. "Truly?"

"I can read."  This was the real bad thing about it, worse than his father yelling and throwing things at him every time report cards came home, worse than Asha's aggravated sighs when he asks her yet another question.  The worst part was having to admit it to people you had wanted only to see the best in you.  "I just have trouble, that's all."

"I can teach you."  Robb squinted out across the stalks of corn waving in the sun, which would soon become their surroundings for many days to come.  "My brother Jon likes recess, but I don't.  So I can bring a book and we can read together.  It should help you, having me to nudge you along."

Theon had wavered before answering, but in the end he gave in, and for the rest of the year they sat with their backs against that rickety metal fence and rad about worlds Theon hadn't even dared to imagine, full of sword fights and dragons and heroes and parents who loved their children, ones with happy endings as a garuntee and best friends that will never run away from you.  It's the first time he got the reason for it, had seen the light that all those teachers had been trying to push him towards: words had magic, and through Robb, he was finally able to find it.

 

3.

They stay friends, best friends, all through elementary school, but it is not until Robb is in seventh grade and Theon in eigth that he goes to Robb's house.  And he knew immiediately after walking through the door that he never should have came.

It was too clean, too nice, and the rooms were filled with things that Theon wouldn't have even thought to buy, let alone be able to afford.  The fridge was fully stocked and the cupboards filled to burst, and Mrs. Stark ( _call me Cat, Theon, everyone does_ ) put home cooked meals on the table when she got home from work.  And that wasn't even taking into account his family, how they talked to each other, how they took care of each other, how the parents still loved one another and his father would never hit any of his kids and this was a safe place, a good place, one that Theon thought he was tainting with his very presence.

That night was supposed to be a sleepover, where they would sneak out later and watch the end of summer fireworks and usher in the start of the school year by raging against what was expected of them.  They would spend the first day of school yawning and slumping in their seats, but they wanted it, the ability to have something cool to write in those "what I did this summer" essays, even if they wouldn't actually tell another soul.  But Theon couldn't stay there, so when Robb went to get a shower like his mother told him to, Theon gathered up his stuff and slipped down the stairs, intending to apologize to Mrs. Stark (because he wanted her approval, he couldn't help it) and text Robb an excuse in the morning.  But then he was stopped by Jon

At the time, Theon had yet to meet Jon.  He knew he was Robb's step brother, and his exsistence was a stain on the family name of Stark that no one really wanted to talk about, and that he was in sixth grade.  Theon had thought that he would be able to handle a sixth grader, but then he was faced with one glowering up at him, and he suddenly wasn't so sure.  

"Where are you going?"  Jon's voice was dripping with something like contempt, and even though that would lessen over the years, there would be many nights where good natured video game sessions would turn into an all out brawl, their mutual love for Robb being the only thing holding them back from killing each other.  Theon thinks it started then, that Jon always had an idea of the person that Theon was, how weak, how much of a coward.  "You're not leaving, are you?"

"I am."  Theon put as much bravery into that as he could muster, trying to find the same blustery courage he had to have when facing down his own brothers.  It didn't work on Jon.  He'd been dealing with Catelyn STark all his life, and she was much scarier than Theon.  "I have a head ache, and I'm going home and until I feel better."

"But Robb's been looking forward to this for a week!"  Theon had been looking forward to it for longer.  They had started planning it a month ago, when they were riding bikes through town.  It had seemed like a dream come true to have a night where he didn't need to keep an ear open for his father's footsteps or dodge his brother's blows, and even better, he was to be spending it with Robb.  "I thought you were supposed to be best friends?"

Theon hadn't thought about it before, because when he did, he always assumed that Robb would have someone better than Theon.  But standing there in that brightly lit hallway under the watchful eyes of Jon Snow, he didn't have time to let doubts cloud his answer.  "I am."

"Then you're going back there, and we'll pretend this never happened."  Theon would hear this a lot from Jon over the years, like the time he found Theon chain smoking out on the corner and Theon had to admit that Robb had kicked him out after the fight but he couldn't go home and Jon had offered him a spot on his bedroom floor, or the time he found him crying in the kitchen after his mother's death, or the one time after the Ramsay incident that Jon had raised his hand and made Theon flinch back.  There were a lot of things the two went through together and don't talk about anymore.  "Best friends shouldn't leave sleepovers, no matter what the reason."

Theon stared down at him.  And then he turned around, walked back up the steps, and threw himself on the bed to wait for Robb to get out of the shower.

(It would take him a while to figure it out, but he really did belong there.)

 

4.

It takes until the end of the year for their friendship to really be set in stone, and for Theon to stop looking over his shoulder for someone to come and take his place.  There weren't many constants in his life, but Robb was one of them, he and is family the only people he could count on to always be there when he needs them, no matter how inconvenient.  Theon would trust Robb with his life, but still, when it came time for him to tell Robb the truth of what his family was like, the words seemed to clog in his throat and refused to leave.

"Not that my family doesn't love you,"  Robb hurried to add, misinterpreting Theon's silence.  Robb had gotten good at silencing Theon's worries before they really even started.  "Because they do.  But we've been best friends for four years now and I haven't stayed the night at your house.  Or even been there when both your parents are home."

"I don't think that's a good idea."  Theon couldn't find the words to tell him, about his brothers and the things they say to him and how you have to have quick reflexes to survive them, how Robb wouldn't even meet his father other than sneaking past his shadowed figure and watching Theon clean up the beer when the bottle inevitably slips from his drunken hand, have his mother whisper promises and say how nice it was to meet him but never make a move to protect Robb, just like she never protected Theon.  "My family isn't like yours."

"I told you I don't care about that."  Robb launched off the curb and started walking backwards.  He looked like  someone who you could trust, someone who was always okay, the kind of other person people leaned on.  "It's alright that our families are different."

"That's not what I meant."  He had known that he would have to tell the truth eventually, but if felt wrong to tell Robb this on a day like today, when the sun was shining and they had a whole afternoon to just be kids.  Theon had had to grow up fast, but Robb never did, and he didn't want to be the one to bring a cloud into his sunny skies.  There would be time enough for that later.  But now it looked like he had to tell him, or Robb might just show up at his door one night and make everything worse.  "My dad wouldn't..."   _My dad wouldn't like you, he doesn't like your dad for some reason and would hold it against you even though Ned never held it against me, he would throw things at you and scream at you and I don't want that to chase you away, so please, please stop talking._ "He's not a nice man."

Theon can still remember that, how the shame filled him up and Robb just stared, the first time that Theon had admitted that what he was going through wasn't quit right and Robb began to realize what he meant when he said that they weren't the same.  "Does he hurt you?"

There was no point in lying, not now.  "Yes."

"Then you can stay with me."  Robb said it like it would be simple, and maybe it was for Robb, to fix things for people when they couldn't fix it on their own.  It became a thing for him after that, for Theon to run to him every time he was broken, even though he tried so hard not to need to.  "My dad will sort it out."

"I'm okay.  Really."  He was okay.  There were all sorts of kids like him who came to school with hungry stomachs and hidden bruises, and this was nothing he couldn't handle.  "But you can't come to my house."

"That's fine."  Robb didn't seem to know what to say.  "You'll just come to mine."

 

5.

It's ninth grade when things really start to fall apart for Theon, when he wakes up to the news that his brothers had gotten drunk and got behind the wheel together, turned the music up loud and pressed the gas pedal down and sent themselves straight through the guard rail.  The police told his mother that they were probably dead on impact, like that was supposed to be a comfort.  It wasn't, not for Theon, because he was left with a shell of a woman for a mother and a sullen, angry drunkard for a dad that spends too much time in the bar down the street.

The sudden silence in the house gets to be too much sometimes, so he pulls on his threadbare coat and makes his way to the Stark's house, an crawls in through the window that Robb always leaves cracked open for him.  Most of the time he just stumbles to the mattress hidden in Sansa's walk in closet and collapses down onto it, trying not to dream, but on other nights like tonight, he holds his breath and shakes Robb awake, hoping that he would somehow make his life a bit less suffocating.

Robb wakes instantly.  He turns and grabs onto Theon on instinct, and Theon thinks he must have done this a thousand times, woken in the middle of the night by a restless Jon or anxious Sansa, having little brothers run to him from thunderstorms and Arya waking him up with the plea to  _please, don't tell mom and dad._ It makes him feel better that Theon warrants the same type of response, but he still feels guilty every time he does it.  "Theon?"  He blinks blearily up at him.  "What's wrong?"

"I can't."  He chokes, and then he cries, just ragged breathing and burning eyes that he hopes Robb doesn't notice.  But he does.  He always notices when Theon needs help.  "I can't take it anymore."

"Can't take what?"  Robb is out of bed instantly, and Theon is reminded of the thought that even though he is the older one and Robb is only fourteen, he is so much stronger than Theon will ever be.  "What's the matter, Theon?"

"It's suffocating.  The thought of... of them."  He could not bring himself to say everything that was bothering him, about how Cora who's father works for the hospital had told her about what his brothers looked like, the broken bones and the way her skin was sliced apart from being thrown through the window shield, how they weren't even recognizable, and he had overheard all the horrible details through the whispers of his classmates.  How his mother just sits and stares at the wall, how his father does nothing but drink and is getting angrier by the day, how Asha never comes home anymore.  About how when he heard, there were a split second of relief because he was finally, finally safe from them.  "I just need.."

"What do you need?" 

Theon was sure that he was about to go and wake his parents, but this was not where this conversation was going, not yet.  "I need to do something stupid."  He took in a harsh breath.  "Can you do that for me?"

And Robb could, it seemed, because they snuck downstairs and stole the keys to the car off the counter, backed it out of the drive and down the street, and then took off down one of the back roads that Robb swears never has a cop, Robb driving with a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel and Theon with the window down.  He crank the music up, so loud he thought the whole town would wake up, and then he stood on the seat and out the run roof.  When he raises his arms up into the sky and tried to touch the branches whizzing by overhead, he almost feels free.

They come back home an hour later, breathless and drunk with the thought of what they did.  They're laughing in the front seat, and Theon gets it for the first time, the lure of the deadly things in life.  "They would have been happy, when they died."  He's not sure why the thought is comforting.  Robb's eyes seemed to glow in the darkness.  "Feeling like I just did?  It's not a bad way to go."

(It is only later, when Robb's breathing evens out, that Theon thinks of what he had done, of how quickly he could have ruined him, and the guilt threatens to swallow him whole)

 

 

6.

They make it through that year the same way they did all the others: together.  And then Theon had become a tenth grader and Robb an official high schooler, the time they had together slipping through their fingers like it didn't even matter.  

"You're practically an adult now!"  A year wasn't that big of a difference, but Theon could still remember what it was like when Robb looked up to him just because he was a grade older, and sometimes he liked to pretend like he was the wiser one.  "Time to make a man out of you."

Theon's idea of making a man out of someone was probably the wrong one, but he blamed his family background and poor impulse control for what he did next.  It had been a good idea in theory, for the two of them to share their first drink together, but when they actually acted it out, Theon found that he didn't like the feeling of being tipsy as much as he thought it would.  Maybe it was because he was too busy worrying about what would come after, about when tipsy crosses the blurred line into bad decisions, about the headache in the morning and the anger that would pool in his fists and make him lash out at everything he loves.  But Robb loved it.

It was Robb that suggested it, in a voice so quiet that Theon wasn't entirely sure he had heard it at all.  But Robb was right there beside him, and now he was looking at Theon in that strange way he did sometimes, like he held all the answers.  And even though he couldn't quite believe it, that he would look over and ask Theon to kiss him like it was nothing, there it was, the question hanging between them.  "You want to kiss me?"  There wasn't an answer other than the sound of his breathing, and Theon took another long drink from the bottle.  It burned on the way down.  "We can't do that."

"Why not?"   _Because we're boys,_ Theon might have said, or  _because we're best friends,_ or even  _I am bad for you and I don't want to ruin your more than I already am,_ but he didn't say anything of that, just looked at Robb's face and leaned in closer, closer, closer until they really didn't have any other option than to go through with it.

(In the morning, Theon swore that he didn't remember much from the night before and Robb genuinely seemed to be unable to recall the kiss, but Theon was lying.  He could remember every second with crystal clarity, and it would haunt him, the thought of what would have happened if he had admitted to what he had done.)

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're just going to pretend there's a time skip, so Robb's ninth and Theon's in tenth grade

1.

Things at home just get worse.

Theon doesn't know why he doesn't say anything, except for the fact that Robb has always seemed so perfect, and he does not want to admit that this is something he cannot handle.  So he doesn't tell him how he cooks meals that his mother doesn't eat, and how she hasn't gotten out of bed in three days even though he cried for her to go outside jus this once, about how Asha was working two jobs and thinking of dropping out of school and he can't help her because no one would hire a Greyjoy boy after what happened to the others.  And he definitely doesn't tell him that the stench of stale beer is clinging to every corner of his house, and the father that used to be so strong is now just collapsing in one himself, how the bruises have multiplied and sometimes, even though he tells Robb that he's going home, he just goes to the corner and chain smokes until he is sure that his father had fallen asleep.  He wasn't going to tell Robb or the Starks any of this, until the day that his father hit him so hard that he split the skin under Theon's eye and sent him tumbling into the wall.

Theon probably still wouldn't have said anything, but then his dad grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him down the stairs and Theon could actually  _hear_ the bone in his arm snap.  And his father was still screaming, still coming after him, so Theon just wrenched the door open and ran out into the cold, barely noticing when he turns towards the Starks.

He doesn't want to wake them all up in the middle of the night, and he doesn't want anyone to know how bad things have gotten, but the pain in his arm is making him sink to the ground and it's just so, so cold, and this is not how he wanted to ring in the holiday season, but Christmas at the Greyjoy's had never been that magical.   _They told me anytime,_ he thinks, trudging through the snow to get to their front door.   _Robb promised his father would fix things._

But when the door opened, it wasn't Ned or Catelyn or even Robb, it was Jon with Arya peaking around his shoulder.  And that just took the damn cake, because Theon and Jon never got along and he half expected Jon to slam the door in his face, but he just opened it wider instead.  "Get mom and dad."  Theon basically collapsed when he was in through the front door, the warmth melting around him like, and Jon helped him sink to the floor without hitting his arm.  "Quickly, Arya."

Her footsteps thundered up the stairs, and he could hear her yelling, waking everyone up in a way that only Arya can.  Jon was kneeling on the ground beside him, and there's a coat around Theon's shoulders now, like it had been made out of thin air.  "You're going to be okay,"  Jon promised, but the fear was white across his face and Theon felt sorry for the hundredth time that night, sorry he needed them so much and sorry he woke them up and sorry that he kept bringing these awful things into their house when it should have been a safe haven.

By the time Catelyn and Ned's faces swim into his field of vision, there were needles stabbing into him.  The cold had been bad, but the warming up was so much worse, even  more than the pain in his arm.  Behind them he could see Robb hovering anxiously, and even though he wanted so badly to be strong in front of him, he could not help but sink into Catelyn's arms when she moved to hug him.  "It hurts,"  He choked out, and it was the first time he had said that and had someone respond to him so quickly, holding him as the tremors shake through him.  "It hurts so much."

"I know."  She smoothed his hair back and pressed a kiss to his forehead, and Robb was clinging to Theon's hand, rubbing the pain away.  "I know it does.  But you're going to be alright, Theon.  Everything's going to be fine."

He almost believed her.

 

 

2.

After that, the spare bedroom is made up for him and he doesn't bother lying about what made the bruises.  Ned had wanted to call someone that night, but Theon had begged him not to, saying he could handle it and this would just ruin things for his mother and sister.  "You don't understand,"  He had begged them.  "Telling people doesn't fix things, trust me, I know, just let me handle it."

And he did handle it, only now Robb was helping him, pressing ice packs to his bruises when the aches from old wounds come back and splitting half his sadnwhich with him at lunch because there isn't any food in Theon's face, giving him a spare key for Christmas and telling him that nothing would hurt Theon again if he had a say.  "We're in this together."  He said, his lips pressed in a thin line after Theon had apologized for waking him up once again.  "Now and always."

Theon liked the sound of that, so he didn't feel guilty about pulling the blankets back and sliding closer to Robb that was strictly needed, trying to push away the voice that was telling him that this was wrong.  He fumbled for Robb's hand in the darkness and gripped it tight once he found it.  "Now and always."

It felt like a promise, but Theon had seen enough things to know that promises are easy to break.

 

3.

Theon had sworn that he didn't remember what happened the night they decided to get drunk together, that he didn't have any memory of Robb's whispered question and how they had kissed once, twice, a third time, just two kids fumbling in the darkness.  But the truth was that he remembered it with crystal clarity, the memory shoved back into some distant corner of his brain where it would only come out in the darkness to be played on the backs of his eyelids in the middle of the night.  It felt a bit like hope, no matter how much he tried to shove it away.

"You need to let that Stark boy go."  It was one of the rare nights that he and Asha were in the house at the same time, whispering in the kitchen to keep from waking up their father.  He was tolerant of Asha, and clawing himself out of the hole he had dug a little more each day, but Theon still knew better than to cross his path.  "He's going to break you."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's not going to happen, Theon."  She was trying to be gentle, but Asha was never good at sugarcoating things.  "Best forget it now."

For a moment, he wondered if she knew about that night up in the playhouse that neither of them talk about.  But that would be impossible.  more likely, she was just talking about the fact about how they were from two separate worlds and probably shouldn't even be friends, let alone be... whatever Theon was thinking of, he wasn't sure.  

"I'll be fine, Asha." The house was stifling all of a sudden, so he got up to leave, already wondering if Robb would be home or if he would have to watch another rom-com with Sana.  When he looked back to see her slumped at the kitchen table, he almost stayed, but he couldn't quite force himself to do it.  Not when robb might be waiting. "Mind your own business."

 

4. 

He holds the hope close to his chest for a while, lets it blossom with the thought of that kiss and the  _what if what if what if_ looping around in his head, but the day over the summer when he bursts into Robb's bedroom only to find him on top of some girl Theon hadn't even met.

"Oh."  He didn't know what to do.  Theon wanted to turn and run out, actually, but they both noticed he was there, so he had to say something.  "Sorry. Didn't know you had company."

"Theon."  Theon wondered if the ice in his own voice was really there or if he was just imagining things, or if Robb's smile was really as fake as Theon thought.  "this is-,"

Theon didn't want to know her name or who she was or why Robb liked her, because if he did know those things, it would make her real, make her permanent.  "Doesn't matter."  He forced himself to smile, to slip in the role of the charming best friend, the one that doesn't care about anything or anyone but Robb and himself.  "I'll see you later, okay?"

 

5.

He does see him later, and neither of them talk about it other than Theon cracking a few jokes and Robb blushing furiously, but that doesn't stop the sight of Robb hitting Theon like a punch to the stomach.  So maybe that's why, the next time he's ducking into the bar to check on his father and sees someone smiling at him, he smiles back.

She's pretty, and too young to be in the bar but drinking anyways, and so unlike Robb that Theon could have cried.  It doesn't take him long to start talking to her, and even less for them to agree to leave, tumbling into the backseat of the car.  

"You should know,"  She starts, but Theon doesn't care about that, doesn't want that, doesn't care how old she is or who she knows or who she might be going home to tonight, doesn't care if both of them will regret it in the morning or if he'll hate this decision come the next week, its what he wants now, and she seems fine with it, too.  He needs it, something to push away the image of Robb holding that whiskey bottle to his lips and the thought of him with that girl, so he covers her mouth with his own to shut her up.

"Doesn't matter."  He grins down at her, and feels himself slipping into someone else, someone he likes much more than plain old Theon.  It would become easier as the months go on to grab onto this person and pretend that it was him, someone who didn't care who Robb Stark might be kissing.  He almost convinces himself. "Nothing matters but this."

 


	3. Chapter 3

1.

Robb is dating Jeyne Westerling, some girl he met while he was working at that run down coffee shop he and Theon used to duck into after school.  The way Robb tells the story, she had come in and ordered the most sickly sweet drink possible, and then was so flustered when he handed it to her that she dumped it all over the counter.  She had insisted on helping him clean up, spilling all kinds of apologies, and Robb had been so taken by her he made her a second drink (for free and even sweeter than the first) and scrawled his number across the front.

And then there was awkwardly flirting over text, and a few late night phone calls where she discussed her favorite books and he talked about his little siblings, and then a first date where neither of them could stop giggling, and eventually they got to the day where Theon burst in on the bedroom.  And even though Theon hated to admit it, they were perfect for each other.

"Do these look okay together?"  Robb was walking through the aisles of a flower shop with a fairly panicked expression on his face, trying to pick out the flowers that she liked best.  "I want them to look okay."

"They look just like the others you were looking at ten minutes ago."  Theon was sitting down on the floor, hoping that no one at the counter could see either of them.  They'd been in here for half an hour now, all because Robb was meeting her parents for the first time and wanted to make a good impression.  He was bringing them flowers and some sort of dessert that he and Theon had spent all last week trying to perfect.  "Cute and flowery."

"I'm serious."  Robb holds two flowers up side by side, looking between them and then thrusting them towards Theon for a second opinion.  "Which ones?"

"The purple."  Theon tried not to be bothered by the fact that Robb immediately chose the ones that weren't the purple, just like he always does when he asks someone's opinion, like he can only know the bad option when he hears it said out loud.  "Why do you even care so much, anyways?"

"I don't know, I just..."  He twisted the bottom of his shirt up in his fingers, the way he always did when he was stressed.  "I really want them to like me, you know?"

And Theon did know.  He'd wanted people to like him for a while now, felt that stomach churning senstation when a stranger looks you up and down and decides that you aren't good enough, not really.  But it was different when it was Robb who was worried, Robb, who hasn't yet managed to figure out how perfect he is.

"They will like you."  there was a lump growing in Theon's throat and he had to swallow hard to make it go away.  He didn't like the thought of Robb going places he couldn't follow, because like or not, Jeyne Westerling is someone who will pull him in the opposite direction of Theon.  It feels like being left behind.  "Believe me."

 

 

2.

The worst part about the whole Robb having a girlfriend?

Theon likes her.  Like really, really likes her.

She's hard not to like, honestly, but he was doing a pretty good job of it until she and Theon had both gotten to Robb's house early and were sent to wait in his bedroom, the two of them awkwardly trying to look at anywhere but each other.  He had tried to do homework and ignore her attempts at conversation at the same time, but then she snuck up behind him and pulled the papers out from underneath his arm, and promptly tried to run away with it.

"Give that back!"  He should have been used to this, but normally it was Sansa poking him for information about his current girl ( _Robb might be dating one, but Theon was dating many, a revolving door of girls that were just as dysfunctional as he was_ ) or Arya stealing his stuff and threatening to throw it out the window.  Theon knew the rules, then, but didn't quite know what to do when it was his best friend's girlfriend that he was chasing around the room.  "It's for school!"

"What is it?"  She jumped onto the bed, holding it high above his head, and he couldn't jump up after her for fear of shoving her off.  Robb might like him, but Theon wasn't willing to push how far that friendship goes by causing his girlfriend to break her arm when he throws her off the bed.   "It is a love letter?"

She draws the word love out like a little kid might, and Theon understood why Rob might have been drawn to this particular girl.  She would fit in perfectly with his family, an even mix of Arya and Sansa.  "Its not a love letter."  He was pouting, and that made him even more annoyed.  So far he'd been able to avoid talking to her besides polite conversation or evenings where he works his way through double dates with fake smiles and charm dripped compliments he won't remember when the night ends.  "It's for my creative writing class."

"Oh." That seems to take the fun out of it, so she sits down on the bed like a little girl might sit down on a trampoline.  She looks down at it and then back at him, and it seems like they're standing on solid ground again.  "Robb told me you want to be a writer.  Can I read it?"

Theon stares at her for a second, because he was suddenly very interested in everything that Robb had told her, but he was also surprised at her asking to read it.  No one ever asks to read his stuff besides Robb, and even that was out of some sort of duty that Theon hadn't figured out yet.  So it was new and scary to have a whole new, unbiased reader right in front of him, one who wouldn't feel the need to sugar coat it if he sucked.  "Yeah."  He'd gotten good marks, but that doesn't mean anything to people who actually read.  "Just not in front of me, alright?"

She nods like it wasn't a strange request and then marches into Robb's closet, flicking on the light and huddling underneath the clothes before closing the door.  There's a few tense moments before she comes back out and hands the paper back.  "It's good."  She doesn't sound like she's lying, either, just stating a fact.  "Better than some of the kids I've read in college."

Robb had told Theon about that, how she goes and takes classes at some college for fun, to get ahead or something.  Apparently not only is she beautiful and kind and funny, she's also smart.  "Thanks."  He is not sure why he says what he does, because he hadn't admitted it to anyone, even Robb, but here he is, spilling his guts out to someone he should be hating.  "I want to be a writer when I grow up."

She smiles at him, the sight blinding and beautiful and his stomach roils when he thinks of how selfish he is, of how he had dreamed to split him up, because this is the kind of person Robb deserves, not someone like Theon.  "You should be."  She hands it back, and he can see where she wrote comments in the margins without asking him first, and after skimming through he found that she actually knew what she was talking about.  "I'll be first in line to buy your book when you do."

They're friends, after that, and Theon can't quite manage to make himself hate her.

 

 

3.

Summer slides into fall without any of them really realizing it, and its amazing, other than the jarring Transition from  _Theon and Robb_ to  _Robb and Jeyne and their mutual friend Theon,_ the three of them caught up in the feeling of being invincible, like nothing could ever drag them down.  It's wonderful in the way it can only be when you're young and haven't really felt what its like to be broken yet ( _Theon thought he did but now he knows there are always places where new cracks can appear_ ), but then there's a phone call slicing apart the middle of the night silence and Robb's name lighting up on his screen, and Theon knows without being told that something very bad has happened.

There are no words on the other end of the line when he answered, just shaky breathing.  That's what makes him really scared, makes him certain that this is truly a bad thing, because he has never seen Robb cry before.  "What's wrong?"  He is already scrambling in the darkness for his shoes and his jacket, fumbling for the light switch.  "Are you alright?"

"It isn't me."  Robb forces himself to be calm.  Theon had seen him do it before, gain a handle on himself because he has to be the one to hold it together, but that does not make it any less frightening.  "It was Bran."

The rest of the story spills out, about Bran and a car full of his friends, a mom that looked at her phone for a split second too long, and Theon has to squeeze his eyes shut to block the imagined memory of two brothers pitched through a windshield, but then he pushes it away because  _Bran, hurt real bad, coma, don't know don't know don't know, mom and dad at hospital, can you come, Theon, please?_

And Theon did.

 

 

4.

Bran wakes up from the coma they put him in a week later, and during that time Theon has basically moved in to the Stark's house to help Robb take care of everyone else.  He's there when Robb gets the call from his mother and clings to the counter with a white knuckled grip, the way he sags down to the floor when he hangs up and cries into his hands with everyone watching him.  

"What's wrong?"  It was Jon who broke the stunned silence.  He was the one who had taken it the hardest.  His hands were covered in scabs and bruises from where he went and punched the tree in the backyard the night it heard. "What happened?"

"He's alright."  Robb chokes out the words through a sob, and when he smiles there are still tears slipping down his cheeks.  "He's going to be okay."

There's an uproar then where the Starks all collapse in on him, all but Jon who just stands there with a shaking hand over his mouth.  It's Theon that Jon turns to, wrapping him in a one armed hug and pulling him in close.  "You hear that Theon?"  His voice is shaking and Theon is bearing most of his weight, but they are laughing and clinging to each other in a way they never had before, the first time they looked at each other as brothers instead of just two people who care about Robb.  "He's going to be fine."

Theon looks over his shoulder at the rest of his Starks and finds Robb, who is still crying but doesn't seem to care that Theon sees.  Robb lifts a hand off Sansa's shoulder and out to him, and if Theon stretches, they can just barely tangle their fingers together.  It seems like they hold onto each other for half the night, the girls and Rickon still on his lap and Jon shaking against Theon's shoulder, the two bookends for the kids to lean on.  Theon isn't quite sure how he got here, but he was glad he did.  "Of course he did."  There was a burning in his own chest, but his father had always told him that boys don't cry, so he choked them down and laughed instead.

(Later, after he had finally coaxed Arya into bed and checked on Sansa, Theon came back out to the kitchen to overhear Robb on the phone with Jeyne, and even though he tried, he really did, he couldn't quite squash the pang that went through his chest, even when he caught Job watching him like he knew what Theon was thinking. But he didn't, because tonight even Theon didn't know what that pounding in his chest meant.)

 

 

5.

"I'm sorry you have to do this." He and Robb were standing at the counter washing dishes.  Everyone else was in bed, having drank the hot chocolate that Theon had made them while they were taking one last night of semi-freedom before Bran comes home and their world changed forever.  Because even though Bran was alive and coming home, he wasn't okay, not like he was.  "You don't have to, I mean.  You can leave."

"Bullshit."  Theon knew that Robb was being a martyr, not wanting Theon to spend his nights helping Arya with homework and trying to fix Sansa's hair, doesn't want him to have to help him cook dinner that never turns out right and spend hours late into the night doing laundry and cleaning and then stumbling up to Robbs bed, where they sleep tangled up in each other even if they won't admit it in the daylight.  "Now and always remember?"

It was incredibly domestic, this thing between the two of them, and this was the first time that Theon had ever felt like he belonged before.  He wasn't going to let this slip with his fingers just because Robb thought it was for the best.  But he didn't think he was going to be sent away, because Robb was leaning back into that counter and a smile was sliding onto his face, the first real one he'd seen in weeks.  "Now and always."  He nods, and his hair falls into his eyes, a tangle of curls.  "I remember."

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

1.

The first snow comes down thick and heavy, blanketing the ground and lulling the town to sleep.  It isn't a snow day, but Catelyn couldn't quite manage the hassle of taking the kids to school, not yet used to all the schedule changes with Bran's wheelchair, so that Starks stayed home.  And when Robb skips, so does Theon.

If things were different, they might have gone and done something exciting, but Robb had bruises shadowing his eyes and Theon just wanted a night to sleep where he didn't have to worry about his father, so they just tucked themselves into that window seat in the attic, so close that their knees were pressed up against each other.

"I realized something the other day."  Robb said, when they'd been silent for long enough that Theon thought he had fallen asleep.  "I'm a bad friend."

Theon almost choked on his hot chocolate at that.  "You?" He snorted, and Robb had to reach over to swipe the whipped cream off his nose.  "Do tell."

"I forgot your birthday."  Robb wasn't looking at him, jaw clenched, like he was actually upset about it, and Theon couldn't begin to get over how ridiculous it was.  His brother had one foot in the grave and woke up to learn he wasn't going to walk again- Theon hadn't been expecting a birthday present.  "So I got you something."

They'd never done presents before, which was why it was so surprising when Robb threw a perfectly wrapped present into his lap.  Theon almost doesn't want to touch it, so afraid he might ruin it, but he does, unwrapping it strip by strip to reveal a leather bound journal.  "A notebook?"

"Jeyne told me about your writing."  Theon bites his lip, wondering if he's going to get in trouble for hanging out with his girlfriend ( _which would be really ironic, if Robb got mad because he was jealous of Theon and Jeyne_ ), like he had crossed a line by asking her to edit stories for him.  But he shouldn't have worried.  "And every writer needs a journal.  And you're going to be a great writer, so you needed an equally great journal."

Theon couldn't talk, and was horrified that he had actually started tearing up during all this.  Robb noticed, because Robb always notices.  "What's wrong?"  Panic.  "Do you not like it?"

"I love it, it's just..."   _Just that you were the only one who remembered my birthday, and my father just gave me a new set of bruises, and with the meds mom is on she odes't even remember my name, just cries for the sons she wished were still here even though they never gave a damn about her, and I love you, I love you, I love you in a way I shouldn't._ "I haven't gotten a present for my birthday in a long while."

"Well."  Robb didn't seem to know what to do with that.  He never did, because his only reaction to things like that was to get all angry and insist that things shouldn't be that way, and then try to fix it even though there was no possible way for a sophomore in high school to fix something like that  "Now you have."

 

 

2.

He can hear his mother crying.

Theon used to try to help, would go and hold her hand, say her name over and over and try to bring her back to her family where she belongs.  But she would only cry, over and over and never stopping until his father stopped yelling, asking for his dead brothers.  It took Asha to tell him not to bother, that you had to let go of things you can't fix.   _And this,_ she said, nodding over at where his mother was rocking back and forth while Asha sifted through the overdue bills that had piled up on the kitchen counter,  _is something that you can't fix._

 _Is that what you're doing to me?_ Theon thought of saying, because she doesn't come home anymore other than to change her clothes and run right back out the door, because he had walked past the diner on the corner of main street and seen her laughing with her friends while he was just trying to find somewhere to keep warm, because he had seen the invites from colleges that keep piling up on her nightstand.   _Leaving me because I'm something you can't fix?_

But he doesn't say that, because she's already given up so much for him and it wouldn't be fair to ask of one more thing.  There's a lot of things he doesn't say out loud anymore, things like  _hey, Robb, can you please break up with your girlfriend because seeing you together makes me feel like your scraping out my insides_ or  _do you remember when I was little and you were strong, dad, when you promised me that nothing would ever hurt me, that Greyjoy man stand tall, and look at you now, old man_ or  _they left you, mom, and it hurts, but I'm hurting too, so what right do you have to break before you fix me?  I'm your son._

He doesn't say anything out loud, but it spills out on the paper  Theon can drift away when he's writing, when the world has sunk to nothing past his closed bedroom door, all his hurt and worry and the constant pain in his chest soaking through the paper and coming out in scraps of words that he can trade out for grocery money.  There's enough underground magazines willing to take a look at his stuff to keep the money pretty constant, and once he went to a poetry reading and came home with over fifty dollars in the hat they passed around.  

"I told you," Robb had said, afterwards. Jeyne was with them, because Jeyne was always with them now, but Theon didn't mind.  This ugly thing growing inside him wasn't her fault, and the absence of a girl wouldn't suddenly make Robb want a boy, anyways.  Theon was mature enough to admit that.  "You're going to be something great."

 _Something great,_ Theon thinks, when his mothers cries bleed through the paper thin walls and the knight in shining armor in his story began to luck a bit too much like Robb.  It's a mantra going on in his head, the latest scrap of hope that Robb has tattooed inside him coming alive with each repetition.   _You're going to be something great._

 

 

3.

Theon had spent so much time wrapped up in his own head that he doesn't realize that Robb is falling apart until it happens.

There is blood.  That is the first thing that Theon notices when he walks through Robb's bedroom door, the red dotting the carpet.  And then he notices all the glass on the ground where the full length mirror used to be, and the cries coming from the bathroom, so he picks his way through the shards and bursts through the open door to see Robb clinging to the bathroom counter, his breath coming out in ragged bursts and tears streaming down his cheeks.

"I didn't mean to."  Robb says, eyes rimmed with red and hands shaking.  There is blood streaming down his arm and dripping down to the floor, and the glass seems to sparkle from where it has dug into his hand.  "I just wanted it to stop."

Theon doesn't bother asking him what he meant by that, just steps over the blood and to him, letting Robb collapse into him.  The shaky breathing turns to full on sobs, great heaving things that shake his entire frame, and Robb clings to him, never mind the pain that must be screaming from hand to shoulder or the blood that was soaking through Theon's one good shirt.  They would have to fix his hand and clean up the blood and the glass, and he would have to wheedle an explanation out of him, but there would be time for that later.  

"You're okay."  It is not often that Theon remembers that he is the older one, that by all rights he should be taking care of Robb, but now with his best friend shaking in his arms it is hard to forget.  "Everything's going to be fine."

 _It's just so hard,_ Robb tells him later, after his hand was cleaned and bandaged and Jon agreed to say that Robb had gotten hurt breaking up a fight between him and Theon,  _being strong enough for everyone else._

 _Lean on me,_ Theon had said then, the words bursting out of him before he could wonder what it meant or what exactly he was offering.   _Let me help you._

 

4.

He and Jeyne are sitting across from each other in a coffee shop when it happens.  It's a thing for the two of them, for him to hand her his notebook while he goes to the counter and gets their coffees (black, always, even though he would rather have hot chocolate, but only Robb really knows that).  By the time he gets back, she'd have fixed problems with his writings that he never would have found and they're ready to move on to talking about her English homework.

But today she doesn't take a drink of her coffee or even look at him, just keeps tracing his tight handwriting with her fingers and chewing on her lip.  Theon is watching her, the anxiety curling up in his stomach like it always does before someone gives him their opinions.  But then she talks and he wishes she hadn't.  "These are all about Robb, aren't they?" She does not look upset.  She just looks like she knows, like there would be no part in lying, and having it said out loud like that cut him open.  He had thought it would be a secret.  Jeyne isn't even looking at him, just rereading through everything.  "I can't believe I never saw it before."

"I'm trying not to."  This seemed an important distinction to make.  "I know it isn't... I know you two are together, but I can't stop, so..."  Lame, lame, all of it, and he suddenly wishes he was anywhere else than this too loud coffee shop with his best friends girlfriend.  "So I write instead."

"And it's beautiful."  She is close to crying, he sees, and it makes whatever defense that was about to come out of his mouth die in his throat.  "But it won't ever happen, you know that, right?"

"I know."  And god, he does, he knows that every time he walks into Robb's perfect house, every time he watches the two of them kiss, every time he watches Robb out of the corner of his eye and pretends that he doesn't.  "I've always known that."

"Good."  She looks down at the notebook and then pushes it back to him.  He feels dirty, somehow, like he had done something wrong.  "I don't think we should do this anymore."

Theon tries to apologize, but she doesn't listen, just grabs her coat and her coffee and walks out into the rain without looking back, and for the first time in his life he thinks of being the kind of person that everyone in this stupid town expects him to be, to throw his drink down and kick the chair and storm out, but he doesn't, just slumps in his seat and watches the rain drops stream down the windowsill until the manager finally kicks him out.

(That night, he tries to write something new, something different, but they all circle back to the same thing as always, an endless litany of  _Robb, Robb, Robb._ )

 

 

5.

"Five!"

The ball is dropping, and there are people closing in around him, crowding close to the tv, and Robb is at his back, one arm thrown around Theon's shoulders and the other twisted so he could hold Jeyne's hand.

"Four," And there is a drink shoved into his hand, champagne stolen from someone's parents, and he clinks his glass in a toast without looking to see who gave it to him, wishing it was stronger, wishing it would burn on the way down and make him forget.

"Three,"  Now there was a girl in front of him, one with smudged lipstick and shaky legs, clearly drunk, and Theon just shook his head when she looked up at him, because he was thinking of Robb behind him and a part of him, a part he was trying hard not to listen to, was wondering what might happen if he turned and stole that first kiss of the New Year from him.

"Two," And he met eyes with Jeyne, saw the echo of their conversation lying there,  _It's not going to happen,_ and he twisted out of Robb's hold, melting back into the crowd, away, away, away.

"One," but he doesn't hear it, to busy making his way down the sidewalk and back to his empty home, trying not to think of Robb and Jeyne and how they must be kissing now, ringing in the new year together and Theon was alone like he always is.

It hurt, but not as much as he thought it would.

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

1.

Robb and Jeyne break up shortly after that.

And it's terrible, it really is, because Robb is miserable and Theon is trying to make it better but he can't, not when he thinks that every word that slips out of his mouth is going to give everyone a clue towards the thing Jeyne had seen so easily.  So he listens as Robb gets upset, and doesn't comment when they can't pass the second level on Jon's knew video game three times in a row, and doesn't even bother to stop him when he stays out in the backyard and kicks the shed, never mind the cold February weather or the fact that it really must have hurt his foot.

"This really messed him up, didn't it?"  Jon was standing with Sam, the two of them lurking somewhere behind Theon's shoulder.  And Theon doesn't know what to tell them, how he hadn't thought Robb loved her as much as he did ( _because Robb had told him that, too, how he was planning on telling her and was unsure if he should and Theon had to cut himself open to help him_ ) and how this whole thing was hurting Theon, too.  "I didn't think you could like someone this much in high school."

"What do you know about it, Jon?"  Things had gotten better between the two of them, to the point where they've accepted the fact that they're family with each other's best interests at heart, even if they'd rather die than say that out loud.  Theon was trying to be nicer, but sometimes it was just so hard.  "Have you ever had a girlfriend before?"

"You haven't had a girlfriend either."  Sam pointed out.  Sam was normally caved whenever Theon so much as looked at him, preferring to hide behind Jon, but whenever Theon started in on his friend Sam always found his voice.  

"No, but I've had girls."  A string of them, actually, taking them out on dates that always lead them to stretching out on the backseat of that car he had scraped his money together to buy.  They never lasted long, and eventually it would stop being fun and he would stop to call even though he promised, and he would have a few more stories to take to Robb.  He wasn't the best boyfriend, but that didn't stop them from being willing.  "Do you know what that's like, Sam?"

"No."  Theon snorted, and the three fell silent again, watching Robb kick at the shed and kick at the snow and then come back to them, panting, and Theon wanted the ground to swallow him where he stood, because he was relieved, damn it, actually  _happy_ she was gone because at least he wouldn't have to watch them together, and that makes him a horrible person.  Even worse, he thinks at least Jon knows the truth, because Jon clearly knows  _something,_ what with the way he's started looking at them when Robb and Theon are together.  "I wouldn't."

"Don't learn."  Robb groans, and it seems like whatever horrible thing that had centered into his chest had been kicked away out there in the backyard, because he slings an arm over Theon's shoulder and grins.  And Theon just lets himself be tugged closer and melts into his side, wishing it was like this for real, as easy as breathing.  "They'll just break your heart."

 

 

2.

They get in fights all the time, but not one like they just had, where Theon walks in the door and gets blindsided by Robb's sour mood, where Robb spouts off accusations and goes for the jugular, and even though Theon knew it was just because he had to make Jeyne her super sweet coffee and pretend it didn't hurt, he still shot back with words just as sharp as robb's until the two of them were standing on opposite sides of the room.  Theon was not raised to pull his punches.

"Well, go on."  Robb gestures at the door, and Theon felt something icy settle down deep in his chest, because Robb had never, ever turned him away before.  

 _I have no where to go,_ he could have said.  Or  _I'm sorry, I'm sorry she broke up with you and I feel like its my fault_ or  _can you not, Robb, not tonight._ But he doesn't just sneers and slams the door on his way out, pounds down the stairs and out the front door.  And then he walks to the corner and just stands there, because he really didn't have anywhere else to go. 

That's where Jon finds him, pulling up on the side of the road, headlights blinding Theon on purpose because he's an ass like that.  And then he rolls down the window and just stares at him, at the snow covering his coat and all the cigarette butts circling him.  "Jesus."  Jon leans his head out the window like that might make the picture in front of him change.  "What the hell are you doing here?"

 _Freezing, for starters._ He wanted to beg for a coat but couldn't, so he just crossed his arms and stared straight ahead.  "Robb kicked me out."  He felt pathetic, because this is who he's always going to be, this pathetic little boy that looks to his best friend for rescue and stands begging on street corners.  "I can't go home."

It wasn't that bad to admit that, because Job already knew, had known the whole truth from the night he had to hold Theon up when the pain from his broken arm forced him down.  Jon just stared at him, and there was something in his eyes, and then he was leaning across the car to throw the passenger door open.  "Get in, Greyjoy."

 

 

3.

"What the hell."  Jon stood in the doorway of his room, watching Theon.  "Where's all your stuff?"

Theon had crashed here for a week straight now, with neither him or Jon or Robb mentioning why, because Robb is still stubbornly not talking to him for a reason that Theon couldn't figure out.  And it had been okay, even if Theon couldn't really relax, and even if he laid awake at night thinking about slipping into Robb's room and saying sorry, climbing into bed with him.  It's been alright, because Jon plays video games past midnight and always lets Theon take a turn, and he invites him to go hang out with him and Sam and once Theon agreed, and he brings meals up when Theon doesn't feel like admitting he's actually here.  But he had to leave, eventually, so he figured he would go now before Jon got home.

Which didn't work, obviously.

"Look."  Theon bit down on his lip, trying to stall for time.  "I've stayed here long enough.  I can go home."

"And get used for a punching bag?"   Jon yanked the bag out of Theon's hands and threw it on the ground, and Theon hadn't realized how much tougher than him Jon had started being until that moment.  "I don't think so."

"It's not your problem!"  The panic was swarming in his throat, the way it always would when someone would try to help him, the scrambling to gain some solid ground to stand on.  "I can handle it."

"But you don't have to.  Jesus Theon."  Jon threw himself onto the bed.  "You live here, you know."

"With Robb."  There was something else in his throat now, something that made his voice threaten to crack, and he had to swallow it down.  "I stayed with Robb.  And that's okay, because..."

"Because of your stupid now and always, I know."  Jon threw the bag back at him.  "I know, I know, I know, okay, I've had to put up with you for years now and somewhere along the line I've become attached to you and don't like when you show up bleeding on our doorstep anymore than Robb, so how bout you get it through that thick head of yours that we're friends and get the mariokart set up, alright?  Unless you'd rather make an ass of yourself."

Theon stared at him, and Jon stared back, red faced.  And then Theon set down his bag. 

 

4.

"She broke up with me because she said I liked you, alright?"  Robb was standing at the top of the stairs, Theon shaking the snow off his boots when he walked through the door.  It was the first time they'd been alone since their fight.  "And I don't, I swear, not like that, but..."

"But you think you could."  Theon had to swallow something down, the fear that had suddenly appeared even though this is what he had been so desperately wanting for ages now. Because this was not better, because Robb had always been this thing right out of his reach, and even though Theon loved him, he could not bear to try and see that it wouldn't work, the proof that Theon hadn't been good enough after all.  "You're scared your.."   _Gay,_ but Theon couldn't say that, not when it had the potential to be turned back towards him.

"Don't say it."  Robb's grip on the bannister was so tight his knuckles were turning white, and he was crying, and Theon didn't want to have this conversation, because it reminded him that this thing inside of him was  _bad, bad, bad_ even if there were people telling him he was okay.  "Please don't say it."

"it's alright."  This was another one of those rare times where Theon had to be the strong one, but this time, he didn't know what to do or how to help. "It doesn't make a difference to me."

Robb nodded, jaw clenched tight.  "She told me it wouldn't.  Said it wouldn't matter to you."  He sunk down on the stairs and put his head in his hands, and Theon climbed up to sit down beside him.  "I'm sorry I yelled at you.  Sorry I threw you out.  I was just..."

 _Terrified, ashamed, strangled by the truth and the fact that no one knows it but you. T_ heon thought, but doesn't say, just wraps an arm around him and pulls him close, let's him twist his hands in Theon's shirt and buries his own hands in Robb's hair, the hope that he mostly stamped out flaming up again. "It's okay."  And it is, for the most part.  "It's all going to be okay."

 


	6. Chapter 6

1.

They don't talk about it for another two weeks.

Robb had asked him not to talk about it and he didn't, even when that thing that happened on the steps seemed to draw the life out of their every interaction, leaving the two of them stilted and awkward, and made empty reassurances clog Theon's throat.  There were all kinds of things he wanted to say, like  _this is okay_ or  _I'm not going to look at you any different_ or  _Jeyne didn't care, I don't care, no one in your family will care stop being so scared,_ or sometimes, when he's especially frustrated with how stupid the whole thing is  _you don't know this but it's really, really ironic that you were afraid of me abandoning you because you liked guys._

So they don't talk about it, not until that stupid obligatory "gay is okay" commercial comes on and leaves the two of them with no choice.  They'd been spending the night watching tv and eating their way through a third pizza with Sam and Jon, but then the tw of them left for a party and it was just the two of them alone.  They had started on opposite sides of the couch, but eventually Theon found his way until he was slumped into Robb's side and Robb had his arm around him, so when the commercial came on and the guy proposed to his boyfriend ( _in a very romantic way, but that's not the point_ ) Theon could actually feel him stiffen and pull away, like he thought Theon might be afraid that being gay was contagious.

"I really did mean it when I said it didn't make a difference."  Theon couldn't keep the words back any longer, not when it kept coming between the two of them like this.  "I don't care if you're just as likely to be in love with Harry Styles as your sister is."

It might not have been the most sensitive comment, but Theon had always been best at burying emotions under sarcasm and sharp words.  "I'm not..."  He was spluttering out his words.  "I'm not in love with Harry Styles."

"Right, I know."  He was lying, and Theon knew it.  Everyone loved Harry Styles.  Even Theon.  But that wasn't the point, so he grabbed Robb by the shoulder and tugged him back into place. "I'm just telling you it wouldn't matter to me if it were."

"Well maybe it should."  Robb wasn't even looking at him, just straight ahead, like he's actually interested in watching this episode that they've already seen and don't really like.  "Sometimes I feel like...."

 _Like you're taking advantage of me?  Like you're corrupting me?  Whatever it is, Robb I promise I wouldn't mind._ "I'm the one who gets to decide that."  He takes ahold of Robb's hand and squeezes it, once, twice, and it only hits him then how easily it must have been for Jeyne to see the truth, if they do stuff like this all the time.  "It doesn't matter, and I'm not going to talk to you differently, or be constantly worried that you're checking me out, or thinking over what I say in case you take it in a way I don't mean.  We're us, remember?  Now and always."

Robb smiled at him, just a twitch of the mouth but good enough.  "You promise that nothing's changed?"

_nothing, nothing at all, except for the fact that sometimes I think of you at night in the dark and that maybe Jeyne was right about the two of us and you just can't see it, and that I'm sorry because if anyone was doing the corrupting it was me, nothing has changed at all, robb, except now there's no way for me to stamp out this thing inside of me, so maybe everything has._

"Promise."

 

 

2.

That's also around the time that Ned's old friend comes to town, some old college buddy that he hasn't seen for a while.  They're moving here for some business opportunity that no one is really clear on and ned is being talked into helping with, Robert and his ice witch of a wife and three golden haired children.  

They're having this party to welcome him, him and his awful family, all of Catelyn's suburban friends parading through with pyrex containers of party dishes and Ned's old frat buddies calling to say of course they're coming, that there's no way they'll miss seeing him again.  And Robb and Theon are both just trying to stay out of the way and keep the kids in check, planning to sneak down once the party is in full swing and pile a plate full of food, and then spend the rest of the night having an everngers marathon.  They'd gotten all the movies from the library the night before, and once Arya gets bored terrorizing Tommen ( _theon thinks that's his name_ ) she'll come up here, too, dragging Jon behind her.

It was going to be a good night, until Catelyn Stark appeared in front of him and dashed it all to pieces, her words making a sour taste spread across his tongue.  "I'm really sorry Theon."  She looked it, too, but that didn't change the fact that it was her sending him away, her decision, her making her face the monster she knows is waiting for him back home.  "I'd love to have you, but..."

But. Theon knows what comes after that.   _But look at us and look at you, look at who you're father is, they'll whisper, but I want to make a good impression, you're a friend of Robb's that we took in like a stray dog but sometimes there are nights where we will have to turn you away._ And he can't blame her, not really, not when the meal he had just got done eating had been cooked by her and the coat she was handing him was one that the Starks had gotten him for Christmas.  

"It's alright, Mrs. Stark."  He can see Robb coming down the stairs behind him so he cuts his good bye short, even as he tries to force a smile to show her that there were no hard feelings.  "It's not a problem."

He leaves before Robb can catch him even though he is calling his name, flipping his hood up so no one can see his face when they watch him go.   _You never belonged there,_ he thought, because most of the time he manages to convince himself otherwise but once he gets far enough away from Robb, he always remembers.   _Never._

 

 

3.

Theon had thought he was going to spend that Saturday night wrapped up in one of Robb's old blankets, but instead he was sitting with his back to a locked bedroom door and with his headphones in to keep away the sounds of his father's screams ( _he just yells now, at Theon and his mother and his dead brothers and the world, really_ ), one of the journals Robb got him spread out across his lap and words spreading across the page.

It's what he does when he gets upset now, he runs away to something, either to Robb or into his notebook.  Sometimes, if he gets it right, if he gets into the  _flow_ of things, where the words come faster than he can put them down on the paper and they all seem  _right,_ seem like they fit together in a way that Theon never quite manages to, he can put everything wrong in his life to a dark corner of his mind and lose himself in the rhythm of his words.  He's almost there, so close to being lost in the wave of words that he can almost feel it tingling in his fingertips, when he hears the knock on the window.

The sound startles him so bad that he draws a shaky streak of ink across the page, but when he looks up there is Robb, balancing on the edge of the roof with a bowl in one hand and a grin spread across his face.  It doesn't take long for Theon to get to his feet and slam the window open, grab him by the arms and pull him in, first onto the desk and then to the floor, the two of them falling to the ground in a heap.

"What the actual hell are you doing here?"  Theon asked, trying to push Robb off of him and not succeeding, because even thought Robb was a year younger, somewhere along the line he had gotten a lot bigger than Theon.  "I thought you had a party."

"I didn't want to be there."  Robb brushed his tangled hair back with his hand and then grinned again, like this wasn't strange for him to be here, like his mother hadn't sent Theon away just three nights ago.  "I wanted to be with you."   And God, like that wasn't the worst thing for him to say, like that didn't tie his stomach into a knot and pull it up into his throat, all his hopes and forbidden feelings suddenly visible between them.  "Thought we could have our movie night here instead."

Robb offers up the container, which is stuffed to bursting with food that Cat had clearly picked out with Theon in mind, and then lets his backpack fall open to reveal all the movies, and Theon chokes on a laugh, because he had come all this way to do something nice and Theon couldn't even help him follow through with it.  "We can't.  The tv.."  He gestured behind him, at the tv with the busted screen, the one that he had bought for twenty dollars at a garage sale and he and Robb had spent the better part of the afternoon lugging up the stairs and trying to set up.  It was prone to a fuzzy screen and bursts of static, but it had been his and usable, until his dad lumbered up the stairs and put his fist through it.  "Sorry, Robb."

Robb blinks at it, maybe thinking of that day when he first got it, when the two of them sat in front of it and admired how great it was, even though it was really just a piece of crap.  "Oh."  He shrugs, then finds his way towards Theon, stretching out across the floor in a way that reminded Theon of his old dog, Greywind. "Well, you'll just have to think of some other way to entertain me."

Theon stared down at him, all kinds of awful suggestions on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them down.  "Like what?"

Robb picked up the journal and flicked through it, a gesture that sent Theon's nerves spiking.  "Read to me?"

The refusal was right there, but looking down at him, Theon couldn't quite make himself get there, so he just took the journal back and flipped to a page that he knew was good, that he had written when all the words were  _right,_ and even though he could hear the echo of Robb in every word, he read it anyways.

 

 4.

He runs into Jeyne, at that same coffee shop they would always go to.

Theon doesn't mean to talk to her, but then he is saying hi and she is asking him how he is, and they are carrying on a conversation independent of Robb, and it hits Theon that they were friends, really and truly, and maybe this doesn't have to end.  They spent a lot of time together, poring over papers in their corner coffee booth, her with her sickly sweet drinks and him with his fifty scent coffee (not what he wanted but what he could afford), her fixing the holes he had left in his writings without noticing.  It's rare that you find someone to speak your language, someone who  _gets_ it, and Theon thinks that if he found that in Jeyne, it'd be a shame to let it go.  Robb didn't have to know.

"I'm good."  Jeyne says, when he keeps the conversation going and asks how she is.  And it really does look like the truth, with her hair done and smile brighter and her shoulders seeming to show that she is more at ease than he had ever seen her, and for the first time Theon thinks that the break up didn't have as much to do with him as Theon had feared.  "I've missed you."

It's the closest to mentioning Robb as they had gotten, and the tension bubbling up between them causes Theon to blurt out what he had been thinking, something that he knew would be better kept silent.  "I miss my editor."  He says, and there's a flash of something across his face, like a shadow from that day where she asked if his peoms were about Robb and he hadn't thought to lie.  "Maybe we should do that again?"

There's a gentle smile on her face, and that hurts more than if she had been mean about it, really.   _We're friends because of Robb,_ that smile seemed to say, and Theon was reminded of what it felt like to always be the one to be left behind and turned away, a bitter taste across his tongue that never seemed to go away.  He's always going to be a stupid boy who tries to go places he isn't wanted, no matter how many times the lesson is taught to him.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."  She says, and whatever spell they had over them was being broken, and she is gathering up her coffee.  He watches the steam rise from his own cup instead of looking her in the eye, and he feels her hand ghost across his shoulder, feels the fingers tighten and release as she walks away from him.  "I'll see you around, Theon."

"Right,"  Theon says, and thinks that this is no less than he deserves, what with everything he's done to Robb, all those feelings he keeps penned to his chest and the selfish things he wants from life.  "See you around, Jeyne."

 

5.

They come back from church together, Theon and all the Starks, just like they have every Sunday since Ned sat Theon down and told him that if he was going to be part of this family, he would have to suffer through a service each week.  And he went, squashed between Robb and Jon, and let himself be strangled by the collar of his one dress shirt, mouthing the prayers and kneeling at the right moments even if he didn't believe in it.

Robb believes, though, and he likes to watch him, which is how he knows that something was up that morning when he didn't say the prayers on cue and there was a tightness to the way he was holding himself, so stiff it seemed like he was ready to snap.  So maybe he isn't surprised that Robb said what he did when they sat down for their Sunday breakfast.

He had been quiet, quiet enough for Cat to give him second looks and Theon to kick him under the table, but then he sat down his fork and stood up.  And then-"I'm gay."

He said it like it didn't matter, like it was nothing, like he wasn't swallowing down his fear and like he hadn't spent hours on the phone with Theon while Theon talked him away from the edge, telling him not to worry, that it was fine.  The announcement cut off all other conversation, and the silence stretched on, long enough for Theon to burn everyone's expression itno his memory, ready to step in if something were to go wrong.

Cat and Ned were staring, forks help halfway to their mouths and dripping eggs.  Sansa had squealed, Arya was squinting around like she didn't quite understand the fuss, and Bran was looking nervously from one parent to the other.  Jon had been overcome with giggles and was leaning into Sam's shoulder, who looked appropriately awkward and had definitely picked the wrong day to join the Stark's for family brunch.

It wasn't until Rickon spoke up, tiny little Rickon who didn't even look up from his eggs and couldn't have understood why it was important, speaking through a mouthful of eggs.  "Is this why you and Theon hang out so much?"  He narrowed his eyes at Theon, and at his feet, Shaggy pricked up his ears.  "Are you dating?"

Just like that, all the heads swiveled to look at theon, and he stared over at Robb hopelessly.  "No,"  He spluttered, but it didn't matter, because everyone was starting to get over their shock.  "We're friends."

The family seemed to get over it then, Ned and Cat converging on Robb and saying it didn't matter, they didn't care, they still loved him, his siblings piling in and peppering him with questions, and Theon was shut out, melting into the background, another reminder that he wasn't a part of this, not truly, no matter how much he wanted to be.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm really screwing up the ages here, but. the grades they're going into are..  
> Theon is a senior.  
> Robb's a junior.  
> Sansa is going to be a freshman, and Arya a seventh grader.  
> Bran's going to be in sixth grade, and in this chapter is in his last day of fifth grade.  
> And we're going to say Rickon is a second grader.  
> Not accurate, but its an AU, so who cares

1.

Theon's starting to realize how true it was when everyone would tell him not to grow up, to hang onto these little moments, and to never take for granted how fast life is passing you by.  He thought that he would have this life forever, stuck barricading himself in his tiny bedroom and walking down the hallways with Robb, but then that last bell rang on the last day of his junior year, and all of a sudden he's basically a grown up.

His family doesn't care, obviously, because Asha now never comes home other than to leave part of her paycheck on the kitchen counter, and his mother is still swinging in and out of lucidity thanks to the new drugs the doctors are trying, and his father seems to split his time between construction sites (because somehow the company hasn't failed yet) and the bar down the street.  It's nothing less or more than he expected, so when Robb comes up beside him as he walks through the door and slings his arm over Theon's shoulder, pulling him tight, he can't help but care a little more when he thinks that it was the best reaction he was going to get.

"Come over later, around six, alright?"  Robb was hollering over his shoulder at him.  They never get to talk right after school, because Robb has to take off to his tutoring gig ( _yes, even on the last day of school_ ) and then straight to pick up Bran and Rickon from school, ever since Bran started complaining that the kids on the bus made fun of him with his wheelchair.  "We're going to celebrate."

"Celebrate what?"  Theon hollered after him, but he thought he knew.  The Starks had a tradition of rolling sleeping bags out under a half constructed tent and staying up as late as they can on the night school lets out for the year, a tradition that Theon and Jon and Theon haven't missed no matter what better offers roll around.

"You being a senior, of course!"  Robb grins, and Theon feels a pang at that, that the whole is family is going to go out of their way to be excited for him ( _and someone should be, really, he's kept a 4.0 since freshman year after Asha scared him straight_ ) just because they knew he doesn't get any of it at home.  He wants to tell him not to bother, that being included in tonight will be special enough no matter what else they do, that he isn't worth all of that, but then some boy in a letterman's jacket Theon doesn't know is pulling Robb away from him, and he doesn't get the chance.

(He feels strange about being celebrated, but he goes over anyways, and they eat steaks that Ned took the afternoon to make and Theon blows out candles on a cake that Cat had baked special just for him, Robb holding his hand under the table.  That's how they start the summer, with icing smeared across their faces and sun on their skin and starts spread out above them, tangled up in the sleeping bags and getting their first taste of what it means to be young and have the whole world spread out in front of you.)

 

 

2.

 Money's tighter than ever and Asha isn't around to help out, so despite being tempted by Ned's tactful offer of helping out with things that Theon needed, he joined up as a member of the auto shop in town, spending his days sweating in the garage, changing oil and tires and batteries and sometimes standing around with the whole group of guys there, trying to figure out how to fix the amount of damage some rich guy's son did to his car.

It's a good job, even if it wasn't what he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing.  He's actually pretty good at it, and the work takes his mind off things, even if he shows up at Robb's house stinking of oil and sweat and covered with so much grease that Cat had actually given him a hamper to put his clothes in and a drawer to store clean ones.  And even better, he gets to leave every other week with a nice check in his pocket, one that his dad has no idea he has.

"I wish you didn't have to do that,"  Robb says, while he's helping to hold an ice pack onto Theon's shoulder.  It was bruised and out of place and probably bad enough to see a doctor, thanks to the boss's kid letting his hand slip and smacking a metal rod ( _Theon hadn't been watching, he doesn't know what it was_ ) right down onto his back.  It had hurt a lot, but the boss was nice and thanks to him being a minor that the man doesn't want to get in trouble for hurting, he got a week off with pay.

(Though that might have had less to do with Theon and more to do with him being the kid with the crazy mom and drunk dad and dead brothers.  There's a lot of perks with that, as much as he hates them.)

"I don't mind it."  He shrugged his shirt back on, wishing it wouldn't hurt, and wishing Cat was the type of mom to just dole out pain pills without asking what happened.  Theon could steal some of his mom's, but he thinks that a dangerous road to start to walk.  "It's good pay."

"Yeah, but.."   _But I'm working at the library for five hours a week and still tutoring and don't have to worry about the things you do, but you shouldn't have to worry about the water and electricity and grocery bills, but you're a kid, but you shouldn't spend your summer like this._

"It's fine,"  Theon says, the words feeling wrong on his tongue, and Robb just shrugs and puts the ice pack back without saying anything else about it, but later Cat comes to him armed with pain piles and a brace and demands to see it, and its the first time he can remember knowing what it's like to be taken care of by someone.

 

3.

 It was the summer of many things, but it was also the summer that Sansa met Joffrey.

Theon had always known she was a little boy crazy, caught up in the idea of charming princes and romantic love stories.  He had thought it was cute in a heartbreaking kind of way, because he always known that one day reality would come and slap her across the face, so he watched her cheesy romcom movies with her while Robb took care of Arya and he listened to her tell him how he should have asked that girl out on a date.  But that all took on a whole meaning when she met Joffrey.

"Sickening."  Arya said, sitting between him and Robb at the ice cream shop, because Robb had been sent out to chaperone and Theon had come with, and they couldn't seem to get rid of Arya.  "Truly disgusting."

She was speaking through a mouthful of rocky road so her words were garbled, but Theon thought he understood.  Sansa was giggling in a way that she had never giggled before, leaning into Joffrey to get his attention, hanging onto his every word.  From the look on Robb's face, he agreed.

"I can't take much more of this on an empty stomach."  He and Robb had agreed that they were just going to get the kids stuff because they were going out to eat with Jon and Sam later ( _the four of them had formed quite a bro club, once Jon and Theon stopped fighting each other everytime they laid eyes on each other_ ), but he couldn't just sit here and stare at the two of them.  It was weird.  And besides, he just got his paycheck, so he had the money to spend.  "Robb, you want anything?"

"Uh.." He tore his eyes from the window, where he had been staring at Joffrey like he would send Greywind to eat him.  (But that was ridiculous, because one of the Frey's had ran over him a few years ago as revenge for Ned's firm suing them.  He's in jail now.)  "No, I'm good."

Theon nodded and went to the counter, and ordered a strawberry for himself and a moosetracks for Robb.  Robb always said no at first, but he was never truly able to hold out against chocolate.  "Two scoops or one?"

"Two, please."  It had been a good week, and from the looks of it, they would be here a long time.  "Thanks."

The girl behind the counter smiled at him as she scooped it.  "That's Robb Stark, right?"  She nods over in the direction of where they were sitting, and Theon didn't even get the chance to answer before she was talking again.  "How long have you two been dating?"

"I..."  This is happening more and more, where Asha would demand to know if they were dating and not believe him when he denied it, where Cat would assume and Robb would have to correct her, where Jon snickered at them and Arya rolled their eyes and Sansa giggled and they both pretended not to notice.  But it hadn't ever happened in public before, with an almost stranger, where anyone could overhear them and make assumptions.  "We're not dating."

"Oh."  She shrugged, smiled when he put the change in her tip jar, and then opened her mouth to talk again, but Theon was already heading back to the table, panic rising up in him.

When he got to the table, his hands were shaking.  Arya didn't notice, just informed him of what he missed, but Robb did.  Robb always did.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing,"  Theon muttered.   _nothing, expect I'm pretty sure we're in love with each other and everyone can see it but you, except that I sort of want to kiss you and I'm just as stupid about this as Sansa is about Joffrey, but nothing has changed since that night in the playhouse a few years ago only everything has gotten so much harder to take, Robb, are you really this oblivious or am I just making this up in my head?_ "Everything's fine."

 

 

4. 

It was also the summer that the Starks got put in charge of the Summer Bible School.

Cat had gotten volunteered and wasn't able to find a way to say no, so suddenly the whole family is scrambling to put it together.  Jon's friend Sam is handling the choir show, Sansa the cookies, and Jon recess.  Robb was stuck with arts and crafts, Theon in tow, which is how he found himself ducking inbetween groups of squirming elementary school children to refill paper bowls with plastic beads.

"We've only got a few minutes left, so if you're not done with your keychain, you should probably hurry up!"  He'd made this announcement three times already, but this was the last group.  Theon was a little sad- this had been more fun than it should have been.  "And then line up at the door, okay?"

Robb was good at this.  It's what Theon always thinks when he gets roped into doing things like this: that Robb was meant to be something special, something great, that he could handle anything and everyone with ease.  And he liked being able to watch it happen, as he jokes with the other teachers and helps the kids and laughs with the parents when the come at the end of the day.  

Theon creeps up behind him to sit on the table, reaching out to pick up the keychain that Robb had made.  It was blue and grey, with the word Stark spread through the beads.  "What are you going to do with this?"  He threw it at Robb, and even though he didn't think Robb had been paying attention, he reached up to catch it like he had been watching this whole time.  "You don't even have a set of keys on your own."

Robb and Jon shared a car, and more often than not, Robb gave the car to Jon and rode with Theon.  He didn't think Jon would appreciate a homemade keychain from his brother  Robb stared down at it for a moment, and then he handed it back to Theon, suddenly shy. "Maybe you should just keep it."

The offer should have been a joke, but it didn't come across as one.  Instead, it seemed like Theon was accepting something even though he didn't even know what the offer was, but when Robb turned away to usher the kids out the door, he slid it onto his keychain all the same.

He liked the look of it, like it was proof, finally, that he really did belong. 


	8. Chapter 8

1.

He's gathering up moments like hidden treasures, things he doesn't think about unless it's in the quiet of his room in the middle of the night, the only sound in the room the echo of his breathing and the memories lighting up on his eyelids in neon colored clarity.  They all revolve around Robb, a bunch of memories that shouldn't mean anything but somehow do- a brush of the hands, a night where he falls asleep across Robb's chest and wakes to his hands tangled in Theon's hair, a day where he helps make lunch for all the Stark siblings and looks up to find Robb staring at him with an expression on his face that could only be described as fond.  It is beautiful and lovely but is also dangerous, like the sharp side of a decorative knife, something that was mostly kept out of reach but could still cut.  

"You're doing it again,"  Asha says, watching him from across the table.  She has sad eyes.  Theon had gotten used to looking people in the eye to find the truth in him: his father's eyes are angry, his mother's dim, his sister's hurting and hollow.  He could only wonder what his own looked like.  

"Doing what?"  Defensive.  He's always defensive, now.

"Thinking of him.  Thinking of leaving."  She sighed, heavy, and shoved the papers towards him.  He didn't have to look to see what was on them- with just one sweep of the pen, he and Asha would be signing his mother's life away and putting her care into the hands of strangers.  Asha said it was the only hope their mother had, the only real choice for any of them, but to Theon it just felt like abandonment.  It was no wonder he would rather let his mind wander than face the problem.  "It's where you always go when things get hard."

He wished he could do that in real life, just show up at his door and collapse into his arms, let Robb shelter him from the storm raging around him and bat away anything that might hurt him.  But Theon knows that isn't fair, now when he already lays down so many problems at his feet and somehow expects him to know how to fix them.  It's a wonder Robb hasn't gotten sick of it already.

"I'm not thinking of him."  Theon used his teeth to rip the cap off the pen, intent on showing Asha just how present he was, but his pen hovered over the paper.  "Are you sure this is the best thing for her?"

Asha reached across the table to him and grasped onto his hand.  there might have been a time where she would have hidden this from him, where she would have carried the weight of their family's problems on her back no matter how close to the ground it bent her, but now he was old enough to take on some of the blame.  That's all it was with this family, an endless circle of blame, one problem after another that needs fixing.  

"It's the only thing Theon."  He can hear her weeping from the living room where they left her, rocking back and forth in her chair and clutching a picture of her sons.  She never quite manages to learn that they're never going to come home again, no matter how many times he loses his temper and screams at her that they're dead, so she always cries about why they left her alone for so long.  "It's the best out of a lot of bad choices."

He stares at her, fingers twitching, wishing that Robb were here with him.  And then he signed. 

 

 

2.

The Starks might ring in the summer with their sleepover under the sky, but for the rest of the kids at Bradley High, it won't truly begin until the beginning of July when they have their night at the falls.

Theon supposes that every town must have a place like this, a secret hideaway handed down from generation to generation, a place hidden away from watching eyes of cops and adults both, where kids can be young and dumb for a few select weekends a year. For them, it was the falls, which was either a set of raging waterfalls or a stream hidden back in the hills, depending on how much rainfall they'd gotten that year  And this summer there had been a near constant downpour, so when it came time for Theon and Robb and all their classmates to go stumbling through the woods towards the sound of shrieks and music, the stream was moving so fast it was like to sweep them off their feet.

"You excited?"  Theon leaned over closer than he had to just to yell in Robb's ear.  It was seniors and juniors only, and even though Theon went last summer, this was Robb's first year.  Someone passing by shoved a beer into their open hands without asking if they wanted it, and Robb stared down at it like it might bite.  "Going to be a night to remember."

And it was, really, the two of them pulled into the swell of people almost immediately, chugging down their beers and stripping down to their underwear, jumping into the pool of water that had gathered underneath the main waterfall.  There were strobe lights set up and music pounding, letting their words melt away into the air and their silhouttes dance across the stone walls.  It is a movie magic kind of night, where everything looks perfect and like it had been scripted, and for once Theon is allowed to lose himself to a night that wasn't revolving around Robb.

Until, of course, he gets shoved back behind the waterfall during a game of chicken and decides he wants a break, swimming deeper into the alcove, which was completely dark and filled with the roaring of the waterfall crashing down in a curtain in front of him.  All he wanted was the space to breath for a moment before he dove back into the fray, but then he was crashing into someone and pitching forward down into the black water below, only to be pulled up by a strong pair of arms and held their.

"Careful,"  Someone said, and their words sounded ten times louder with the way they echoed.  Theon knew that it was Robb without being told, and he clung tighter without meaning to, clutching at his shoulders.  "Don't want you to get hurt."

"What are you doing back here?"  He should be pulling away by now, but he couldn't.  It was easier to act on feelings when the dark is there to hide you, when you don't have to see the reaction written across someone's face.  "I thought you'd want to be out enjoying the party.  Night to remember, and all that."

Robb was the one big on participating, always dragging Theon out of the house and to school related stuff, but this was Theon's world, not Robb's.  "I just wanted a moment."  A pause, where the party outside felt far away, the music muffled by the sound of the water.  "A lot to take in out there."

"We could stay here forever."  They could, really, just keep gong farther and farther down the path until the two of them were completely hidden and the stone swallows them up.  they would make stories about the two of them, the boys that melted away into the shadows, who disappeared behind the waterfalls, told each year when this night rolls around.  "No one would find us."

And then they were kissing, Robb closing the distance between them and tangling his hands in Theon's hair, and it was good, it was great, it was better than Theon would have thought, and for one blessed moment he let himself get lost in the fantasy he had made, where they would hide back here in the darkness until the leaves fell and the water froze and the two of them would be entombed in this glorious little cave, a pair of boys in love that no one will ever be able to break apart, not even when this whole thing crumbles down around them.

 

 

3.

That night starts a thing that neither of them ever seem to be able talk about.

Robb is the always the one who starts it, and it's always in some dark, forbidden place.  Theon isn't sure why he never brings it up, but he thinks that maybe this thing they have is fragile that if he were to break it apart, it would send everything they had tumbling into a freefall.  He's scared of that, of losing everything they had just because he gets orried over a few kisses, so he lets Robb pull him close whenever the mood strikes and never mentions it comes morning.

Theon can deal with it, really, when they whisper promises onto each other's skin in shadowed places where no one would see them.  They kiss on the way home that night from the falls, after Robb pulled over on the side of the road and made a bunch of promises Theon was sure he had no intention of keeping.  And the next day, when both of them were fresh out of church, slamming the supply closet door closed in the church basement and slamming him back against the wall.  And again, sneaking out into the hallway during lunch, or an innocent one stolen behind Rickon's back, or pressed up against the chain link fence of the ball park when anyone could have come along and seen them.

He doesn't stop it, even when the thought of what they are doing makes his stomach twist into knots, even though he knows that Robb is only using this as some sick experimentation and that it has nothing to do with Theon.  Or if it did have to do with Theon, Robb would never be brave enough to take the truth of this out into the light.

So when Robb slides Theon's bedroom window open and climbs into bed with him, crawling under the covers and reaching out for him, offering things that he hadn't offered before, Theon pushes him away, even though it hurts. Robb is still reaching out and he catches his hands by the wrists, pinning his arms between their chests.  "I can't,"  Theon said, the words strangled, because even though it was a bad idea, he wanted it, more than anything in his life.  But he wanted what they had always had, too, movie nights and sunday brunches and secrets whispered in the darkness.  They couldn't have that if this went badly, and it would go badly.  "We have to stop this."

"Why?"  His eyes ere bright in the darkness, hurt and mortified and something else that Theon couldn't point out.  "Don't you like it?"

It was another one of those times when Robb seemed smaller, smaller than Theon had thought possible.  "I love it,"   _I love you._ "But we can't do this.  We're best friend, Robb, how do you think this is going to end?"

In the silence after his words, Theon thinks of all the things that Robb could say back.  Things like  _but we could be more than that_ or  _we crossed that line a long time ago_ or even  _god, theon, I've had my hands all over you do you really think we can go back._ But he doesn't say anything of the sort, just nods and leaves, crossing the room and finding his way back out the window without making a sound.

(He had tears slipping down his face, and Theon saw even though Robb was trying to hide them.  The sight of them made it ten times harder, so Theon bit down on the sheets and punched his pillow and tried not to scream out curse words, to give into the anger that always seems to be ready to swell up inside him.  This was not how he thought his life would go.)

 

 

4.

Jon was blocking the door.

That alone sent alarm bells off in Theon's head, because it had been years now since Jon turned Theon away just because Robb wasn't able to hang out.  Normally, he would invite him in himself and he could just sit around with Jon until Robb was ready for him.  But today he was just blocking the door, an odd lock on his face and arms crossed, like he would sooner punch him across the face than let him put one step through the door.

"You sure I just can't stop in and say hi?"  He was pleading, craning his neck to look over his shoulder.  He could see Bran behind him, waving from his spot by the window in his wheelchair.  He likes it there, where he could keep an eye on the dogs in the backyard.  "I'm sure he'd want to see me."

That a lie, and they both knew it, though he was certain that Jon couldn't have guessed as to why.  There had been radio silence since that night in Theon's room, all his texts going unanswered and no visits to each other's houses.  Today he decided enough was enough, but now that he was here, he couldn't seem to get by the bodyguard.  

"He's sick."  Another lie.  They were both such shitty liars.  "I'm sorry, Theon."

Theon nods and turns to go, trudging his way across the yard and back to the sidewalk, only stopping to give Arya a push on the old tire swing.  Normally she curses at him to push higher, higher, but today she just grips onto the rope and stays silent, so he catches it and pulls her to  stop.  "You too, huh?"  He kicks at the mulch, and then turns to leave.  "You Starks are ridiculous."

"He's not sick, you know."  Her voice is incredibly sweet and girlish in a way that Arya herself rarely is.  It brings a smile to his face.  He had always been fond of her, mostly because she seemed just as rough around the edges as he was.  "He's just mad at you."

Theon turns back to watch her, letting her stare daggers at him.  "Trust me, kid."  He gives her tire swing another push, regardless of the fact that she wanted it or not.  "I know."

 

 

5.

It takes the beginning of August before the window slides up and Robb climbs through again.  Theon doesn't get up to help him this time, just watches him clamber over the desk and down to the floor from his spot on the bed.  The journal was open again, but this time he was pretty sure he wouldn't be reading any poems.  

"I don't want to talk, alright?"  Robb crossed the room and crawled up onto the bed, punching the pillow and then stretching out like nothing had happened.  "I just got tired of being away from you."

That was another unhealthy thing with them, because sometimes Theon thinks that someone had tied a string between the two of them without them noticing, and the farther they got away from each other the closer it came to snapping.  

"We're still friends, aren't we?"  Theon had been terrified of that, after Arya sent him on his way with a whack with her new favorite stick (she was a menace, truly), afraid that he had finally lose this thing he never deserved in the first place.  

"Course we're friends."  Theon didn't look him in the eyes.  There was always truth in the eyes, and he didn't want the truth, the anger or the pain or the hollow, whatever it may be.  "Now and always, remember?"

"Now and always," he repeats, but even to his own ears it sounded brittle, like it might crack under the slightest pressure.


	9. Chapter 9

1.

It takes a while for them to get back to normal, when Theon can look over at Robb and remember what it feels like to kiss him even when he wasn't trying, but then one day Theon makes an awful joke at Jon's expense and Robb snorts out the laughter that they were trying to snort back, and everything seemed to snap back into place, the two of them falling back into the patterns of who they were supposed to be, like nothing had happened.  Like everything was fine.

(And maybe everything wasn't fine, because sometimes Jon comes behind Theon to squeeze his shoulder in  way that can only be described as bracing, and they don't hold each other close anymore, and sometimes when the room is exceedingly quiet and it is just the two of them alone, Theon wonders what would happen if he were to be weak and take back the night he said it wanted it all to stop.  But mostly, they're fine.)

That's how they ring in the school year, with the ghosts of that summer running at their heels, new tennis shoes squeaking on Robb's feet and Theon's new notebooks just dying to be used up, Robb barreling forward at his future and Theon dragging his feet.  The sand in the metaphorical hourglass was running out, and as much as Theon was trying to slow it down, Theon could still see the finish line creeping closer with every day.  

So maybe it's not a surprise, all things considered, that it leads them to this conversation.

"What do you mean you aren't going to college?"  Robb starts it, or maybe Theon did, but now Cat is involved, looking at him they way she sometimes looks at things, like he is a project that needs completed or a problem that needs to be puzzled through.  She's famous for being the one that people take their problems to, never mind that she has a crippled kid and a army of stray dogs and two more kids that just seem to hang out at her house all the time, she can always take on one more.  And now the one more is going to be Theon.

"Well," He was faltering.  He had a long list of reasons, but he knew they wouldn't be good enough for her.  Robb winces at him from across the kitchen, like it was an apology, and Arya watches the conversation like its a tennis match. "I mean, I just never thought it'd be an option for me."

"Of course it's an option!"  She points at the fridge, where his report card was hanging on the front with all the other Stark kids.  (When she had done that, Theon's chest had burst full of something, something like affection and the recognition of being home.)  "You'll get in.  And there are scholarships, federal aid.  You won't be doing it alone."

 _We'll help,_ went the unsaid words, and Robb seemed to be echoing them, and even little Arya was nodding her head.  Only Arya wasn't that little anymore and Robb was going to be ripped away from him, too, but at least now he can look at Catelyn and appreciate what it means to have someone in your corner willing to fight for you.

"I'll think about it,"  He says, the words thick and his throat tight, an the image of it floats in front of him like a mirage, a dream of something that he wanted but was never going to get.

 

 

 

2.

There are all kinds of things you have to do when you're a senior, Theon learns.

One of those would be homecoming, which Theon wouldn't have thought would be an issue, but apparently it was either go to homecoming or get roped into a day of service projects, and Theon can't take that, not when he knew that if he went he would come into contact with the other members of his family, all of them on the receiving end of the community aid.  He didn't think he could take the awkwardness of that. 

So he's going to homecoming.  That was already decided. But then he sits jammed against Robb at the pep rally, occasionally pinching at the skin of his arm to get his attention and ignoring the wads of paper that Jon was throwing at him.  It was what they always did, with Theon sitting here being annoying and Robb trying to pay attention to what his friends were getting congratulated for, but this time, when it came to announce the seniors being involved for homecoming court, Theon heard his own name ring out.

"It's a joke,"  He says numbly, and loudly, too loudly, but what else was it going to be?  He would get there and it would be a total Carrie moment, pig guts and all, but the only thing he would have to retaliate with would be a long string of curses. 

"It's not a joke."  Robb hisses at him, tugging at him, and the only thing that got Theon to his feet was the fact that his arms were shoving him down the bleachers, his voice shouting down to the other seniors to make way, please, make way for the future homecoming king.  And when he gets to the middle of the gym floor and a cheerleader he might have drunkenly made out with once shoved a crown down onto his head, it is Robb he looks to, the beacon of calm amid all the chaos.

It pissed Jon off and excited Sansa, but Robb was completely silent about it, the whole ride home, until they passed the threshold of his bedroom and Theon could almost sag with relief, sure that he was out of danger when that door closed.  "Hey."  Robb had both his hands on Theon's shoulders, and Theon could have argued that this was a blatant breach of the rules they had agreed on, in order to make the transition from _friends who kis_ s to _friends who are just friends_ a little easier.  "You're okay. It's over."

"I just don't see why.."  He drew in a strangled breath and felt pathetic because of it.  Theon was fine with being in front of a crowd normally, would be able to smile and drop jokes and wink at the girls in the front row.  He'd been called out to the floor as a volunteer plenty of times before, the class daredevil who everyone loves but they know doesn't care much about his own safety or reputation, but it had never been like that, with everyone staring at him an the room so quiet that he could have heard a pin drop.  "Why would they pick me?"

"Because they like you."  Robb leads him back to the bed.  "Because you make them laugh, and you bring them beer without charging more than what it costs you to buy, and all the girls are hoping you'll take them.  It wasn't a joke, okay?  They like you.  I like you.  Everyone likes you."

 _Doesn't feel like,_ he might have said.   _Not the ones that count._ But he doesn't, just swallows it down.  "I don't think I can take..."  There would be whole ceremonies, a crowning on the football field where he would have to stand and look excited no matter who wins, and then a dance out on the court with whatever girl they stick him with, and then the prospect of finding someone to use up the free ticket with.  You get free everything when you're on court, all in pairs of two.  He'd have to take  _someone._

"Hey.  Hey."  Robb makes him turn to look at him, and it's soothing, calming in the same way that Robb has always been calming. "You're not doing it alone, you know?  Homecoming is uncomfortable for every guy, not just you."  He smiled at him, a gentle one that showed that he was just teasing to make Theon laugh.  "I'll be with you every step of the way, okay?"

Theon felt better after that, when he thought about Robb's parents being the one to walk him across the field (because it would have to be them or no one, unless Asha could take off work), about Robb buttoning the flower to the suit jacket, about him waiting in the bleachers to help him laugh off the disaster of the dance he would be forced to participate.  It wasn't as bad, then.  nothing ever was, when you think about going through it with Robb.  "Now and always?"

They hadn't repeated that to each other since the last time that Robb crawled into bed with them, when it sounded broken and brittle and done for.  It's a plea, now, and when Robb says it back the words sound strong.  "Now and always."

 

 

3.

"Oh, come on, Sansa."  Theon bit the words out for her and stopped just short of swatting at her, because when he's frustrated he sometimes gets mean without knowing when to draw the line, and he didn't want to take it out on her.  He was the one who asked for this, after all.  "Can't we stop?"

"You're the one who asked for my help."  She was sitting down on the floor, Arya and her friend Jeyne Poole beside her.  "Or have you decided you want to stumble around on the dance floor like a ten year old?"

"I haven't decided that, no, thanks for checking.  But I thought I'd have a better partner than Sam Tarly."  Jon and Robb had been laughing nonstop since Sansa pulled them all into this.  Sam had been the only one among them who even knew how to dance.  And he knew all of them, too, all the old ballroom dances and the modern onces, and he was surpsingly good at it.  He was also incredibly patient about teaching Theon and telling him not to worry, that it would be easier with a girl, who wouldn't be twice his size.

"If nothing else,"  Sam says, stepping away from him when Theon's alarm goes off, telling them all it was time for him to start walking home.  "Just get a girl who would be able to lead you through the steps.  It'll be dark, anyways."

"You'll be able to see,"  Theon grumbles, grateful to but unwilling to show it.  He claps Sam and Jon on the shoulders, nods good bye at Robb, and then ducks down to kiss Sansa on the forehead.  He leaves Arya alone.  "You're always able to see everything."

He just makes it to the corner when he hears feet pounding down the sidewalk behind him.  It's dark, so Theon is tense and waiting for whoever's chasing him when Robb's comes panting into view.  "What are you doing?"

They are standing under the streetlight on the corner, the same one he had stood under chainsmoking that winter until Jon came to pick him up.  It's warmed now, with the leaves just starting to turn, but even so its a bit too cold to just stand here.  "Tarly's right.  You need a better partner."  He holds his hands out to him, and Theon just stares, wondering if this boy could possibly be real.  "So here I am."

"You want to just dance out here on the sidewalk?"  Theon laughed, because this was not a thing that happened to him, this is something that happened in hallmark movies and Taylor Swift songs.  "What about the neighbors?"

"They're on vacation."  Robb's smile was faltering, and Theon doesn't want that, so when he holds out one ear bud with a question in his eyes, Theon takes it. "Just let me lead, okay?  You follow."

Theon doesn't say anything, just places his hand on Robb's hips and lets Robb's arms go around his neck.  This is much easier than dancing with Sam, but he is pretty sure that this is not how it will be at the homecoming court dance.  There, he will not be holding that girl so close, and they will not be wrapped around each other, and he will not be tempted to break their agreement and move his head those last few inches so he could kiss him.  

"You see?"  His voice was soft, the last strands of the Lumineers song dying away in their ears.  "It wasn't so bad."

"It was easy with you."  Theon takes in a breath, a stuttering one, because he has been knocked off balance by this. "Everything is easy with you."

"That's a good thing."  Robb smiles and it hurts, to have him right here but have him not belong to him, not really.   "We're best friends, it's meant to be easy."

 _But this is like breathing,_ he could have said.   _like your pulse matches with mine, like keeping step, like knowing the words to a song you never remembered learning.  This is wanting you every fiber of my being ano not letting myself have it, because if I touch you I taint you, Robb, you have to see that keeping us apart is the only way.  You do see that don't you?_

He wouldn't.  They live in a peculiar kind of bubble, the Starks, wrapped in their own honor and moral code.  But Theon knows, and that's enough.

 

 

4.

They end up going together.

Everything went the way he thought it would, with the two of them bickering their way through dinner and slouching in the bleachers unless a girl called one of them down to the dance.  Theon was called away more than Robb, but it didn't bother either of them- they knew that no matter how many times the other left, they would always circle back to their spot.  And when Theon had to go down to give his one big performance, he wasn't quite worried about that, either, because he knew that Robb would be waiting for him at the end.

His dancing partner was a freshman who didn't seem able to stop shaking.  "Oh, god."  She was saying, over and over and over.  "Theon, I think I might throw up."

The other boys looked over at him, alarmed, but it didn't worry him as much as it should have.  After spending so much time with Sansa, he's learned that even when a girl claims that nerves are going to throw up, they have to be a lot paler than this girl (Felicity?) currently is to actually be in danger of puking on his shoes.  "Listen, it's going to be fine."  He crouches down in front of her, and is immediately showered in sparkles from her dress.  "Just focus on me when we're in there, alright?  Just me, and not tripping on those tall heels you've got on."

"I don't know how to dance,"  She said, her eyes screwed up and the tiara starting to slip off her head.

"Listen.  Neither did I, until a few weeks ago."  He straightens the tiara, wishing that Robb was here.  Robb was good at things like this.  "But this isn't a real dance."

"It isn't?"  Her eyes had actual tears in them.

"It's not.  See, when it's a real dance, with a person you really want to take and not some arse of a boy you just got stuck with,"  She cracks a smile with that, but theon doesn' really notice, he's thinking of two boys wrapped together under a streetlight.  "Then you can dance.  But you and I are going to have to go in there and be worried about where to put our hands, and how close to stand, and thinking how long the awful song they're playing is.  But when its with someone you actually like, all those things melt away, and it's just the two of you and the music."

It calms her, incredibly.  The football player beside them is laughing, but the cheerleader (the one who crowned him before, the one he made out with and can't remember the details) was swatting him in the arm.  Theon didn't care, so long as Felicity didn't threaten to vomit again.  "Alright. Going through the motions.  I can do that."  She talks a steadying breath.  "And your hands go on my waist.  I do know that."

(The dance was horribly awkward, and Felicity broke down into a fit of giggles halfway through, and at that point she and Theon gave up and did an exaggerated tango routine to an Ed Sheeran song, which everyone thought was very funny and sent Jon into hysterics.   And when he got off the court and dropped Felecity off in the caring arms of her friends, he got to go back to Robb, who was watching him with an unreadable smile on his face.)

 

 

5.

"I'm sorry you didn't win."

Theon snorted.  "I'm not."

He and Robb were walking home, taking turns kicking a stone down the sidewalk.  Robb had driven and Theon rode with him, but then Jon snuck out of the dance early and stole the car, so they were walking.  "Still."  Theon's tie was off and his shirt half unbuttoned, but Robb still looked immaculate. It made Theon want to kiss him, to make him look any sort of ruined.  "I voted for you."

"I would hope so."  Theon gave the stone a kick that sent it spinning across the road, and Robb stared sadly at it for a moment before he kept walking.  "You were my date.  You have to vote for me, it's in the rules somewhere."

"I didn't vote for you because of that."  Robb spit the words out, always so close to the defensive now.  "I voted for you because you're better than all of them."

( _Better,_ Theon remembered, when he threw himself onto the bed in his empty home, an half drank beer spilling across the bedroom floor, an inked in description of what Robb looked like under the strobe lights swirling across his arm because he couldn't track down his notebook.   _I'm what he thinks is better._ )


	10. Of Mice and Monsters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay I know that I normally don't do titles, but I thought of this one so I thought I would use it. 
> 
>  
> 
> Also, this one takes place all in one night.

1.

When his brothers were Theon's age, everyone in town knew to stay away from them.

There were all kinds of whispers flying about them, about how not to let your daughters date them and how your son would end up as a scapegoat for some sort of crime if they spent too much time together, about how you shouldn't hire them because they never show up on time, how they were all just holding their breath until the two boys followed a long line of reckless Greyjoys into an early grave.

It wasn't that way with Theon.

His reputation was spotless, and no one talking about him, unless it was about how he fixed his car or how he had been working some volunteer thing and how nice that was, never mind the fact that Robb had dragged him into it.  So far, everyone loved him, and they kept being pleasantly surprised at how unlike the rest of his family he turned out, crediting it all to the Stark influence.

He knows this, which is why it really pisses him off when he has to punch Joffrey Baratheon.

 

 

2.

Joffrey was throwing a party.

He was a junior, same as Robb, so when Joffrey mentioned it to Sansa ( _who was only a sophomore but still dating Joffrey, no matter how many times Robb told her she was too young for that_ ), he also turned around and extended the invite to Theon and Robb.  "It's a dress up sort of thing, where we all put on suits and the girl do their hair and put on heels that make them tower over us."  Joffrey rolls his eyes.  "It was my sister's idea, and I couldn't say no."

He was almost normal, then, when he shrugged at both of them like they would understand, with an expression on his face that clearly said  _the things you do when you're the oldest._ Theon's the youngest, but after helping Robb take care of his family for a few years, he thinks he counts.  The thought almost made Theon's warm up to him, and both he and Robb had agreed to come.

So they did, struggling into shirts that looked amazing but were most likely being shed by the end of the night because they kept strangling them, walking into the Baratheon's mansion ( _large house,_ Myrcella had corrected Theon, the one time they all ate dinner together.   _Mansions have swimming pools._ ) There had been people everywhere, kids he knew and ones he didn't, holding crystal glasses of champagne and scarfing down the fanciest food he had ever seen, piling up on furniture and weaving arund the fire out in the backyard, watching the karaoke competition going on in the living room and the holiday themed beer pong in the kitchen.  It was actually a good party, and even though he and Robb had gotten separated, Theon was having fun.

At least until he catches sight of Joffrey barreling through the crowd, tugging a sobbing Sansa behind him by the wrist with enough force to rip her arm out of her socket.  Theon's on his feet in seconds, the glass of champagne he had been holding flying out of his hand and soaking down into the carpet, but he cannot get there fast enough, just have to watch it happen.

"Please."  The front door is open, and everyone is silent as Joffrey flings Sansa's hands away from him.  She is clearly being sent home, but she turns back to him, goes to grab at his hands.  And that's when Joffrey's arm pulls back and hits her across the face so hard she hits the floor, the crack echoing through the now silent room.

Sansa is sobbing, and Joffrey is laughing, and Theon makes it to them the same time that Robb does.  They're both trying to get to her, but Robb is clearly confused, not yet seeing the blood on Sansa's face or the joy on Joffrey's, not understanding until Sansa crawls to her boyfriend's feet and he just kicks her back like he would a disobeying dog, knocking the wind out of her.

Robb goes to his sister, and Joffrey looks ready to start on him, too, but Theon steps in between them.  He has had enough of watching boys use girls as their personal punching bags, taking out every one of their own flaws and frustrations on people who just want to show them a scrap of kindness.  "Think you're brave?"  Theon's words are soft but they carry, everyone watching with wide eyes and open mouths.  there are a few phones taking videos, he can see them blinking, hear the narration.  "Picking on a little girl, you think that makes you tough?"

Joffrey isn't afraid yet, but he would be.  But god, he would be.

 

 

3.

He hits him.

The impact hits him hard, but Theon doesn't let up, just moves with him and slams him against the wall, keeps his forearm digging into his throat, watching him gasp for air and barely feeling it when Joffrey's nails scrabble at his arm.  "Come on, Joffrey."  He isn't spitting the words like he thought he would be.  He's whispering, completely calm, even as he drops him and sinks his fist into his stomach, watches him bend over at the waist and catch for breath.  "You wanted to fight.  You wanted someone to be in pain.  Hit me."

He tries, but Theon sidesteps and swings again, feeling his knuckles crack and the bone in Joffrey's nose splinter, watches the blood splatter down to the spotless floor between them.  In his head, he isn't punching Joffrey, he is punching his father and his brothers and his uncles, beating down everyone that has made him feel like he isn't good enough. But he's also seeing Sansa, seeing her sigh at the ends of movies and giggle while she tries to teach him dance, remembering tea parties that Arya would always wreck and the Christmas present she had given him just because she knew there would be no holiday cheer waiting for him at home.

He thought of that, and he punched, skin on skin and bone on bone.  There is blood spilling from his lip and his eye is swelling, and his ribs hurt for some reason, but he gives twice as goo as he gets.  Theon's sure he would have kept going, too, but Robb's hand is on his arm and pulling him backwards. When Theon stumbles away, there is a boy curled up and crying at his feet and a thousand faces staring at him.

"Come on,"  He joins Robb with Sansa, puts an arm around her and steers her out the door.  "Just keep walking."  The cold hits them like a slap in the face, and Theon tears his jacket off to wrap around her shoulders, hurrying her towards the car.  "All you have to do is keep walking."

 

 

4.

He hadn't thought about what he had done until he was in the car with Sansa sobbing beside him, Robb refusing to look at either of them from his spot in the driver's seat. It's not until he's leading her up the steps to the front door that he begins to think about what he had done.   _Just like them,_ a poison voice whispers.  It sounds like Asha.

 _A Greyjoy through and through,_ he thinks, letting Robb take over for Sansa and stumbling back to hit against the hallway closet, staring down at the blood rusting on his palms.  It wasn't his blood.  

"Robb, is that you?"  Cat called out from the living room, and this was so much worse than Theon had thought it would be, because when she turned the corner she made a sound that he hadn't she would be capable of making.  A wounded sound, a broken one.

She called for Ned and that summoned the rest of them, Ned storming in front the living room and Jon pounding down the steps, pausing at the bottom and sending Arya to her room when he sees his sister, Bran rolling out from the kitchen and into view.  "Oh, baby, what happened to you?"  Sansa just cries and falls into her mother's open arms, starts sobbing in a way that shook her entire body.  "It's alright,"  Cat said, and she looks over Sansa's shoulder at Robb.

Robb swallowed hard, and it was the first time that Theon thought he had ever seen him look lost.  He didn't know how to fix this, he thought.  "Joffrey. I didn't know what happened, but he was angry, and he hit her."

That much was obvious, Robb thought, but he didn't say so.  "Joffrey did this?"  The was ice in her tone, and Theon knew then that no matter how angry he thought he had made her in the past, it was nothing compared to this.  "Ned, you call Robert.  You call him and make sure that boy never comes near our daughter again."

It's a very possessive kind of love the Starks have for each other, he thought, watching Ned and Cat lead their daughter to the couch, ducks into the kitchen to see Arya standing on a chair to make her sister hot cocoa.  Jon and Robb were standing by the doorway, whispering, occasionally darting glances at Theon.  "We best call the police, too,"  Cat was fretting, because this was a problem, and she was going to fix it in every way possible, damn it. "Make sure he isn't tempted to do it again."

"He won't."  It was the first word Sansa had said that made sense, and when she raised her head to look at all of the, her eyes were filled with tears and fire.  "Theon made sure of that."

All the heads swiveled to where he was lurking in the corner of the room, trying to stay out of the way.  He couldn't hide what he had done, not with the way his face was busted up and his knuckles split, but he felt the need to hide what he had done all the same.  Theon hadn't mean to do it, he didn't want to be like them, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't.

Cat got up from the couch and crossed the room to get to him, stopping and pulling his hands out for her inspection.  It hurts when she checks them and holds them tight in her own, but its comforting.  "Did you hurt him?"

Bile rose in his throat and tears burned in his eyes, but he told the truth all the same, expecting to be scolded or sent away.  But she didn't do any of them, just smiled, smoothed his wild hair back, and kissed his forehead.  "Good,"  She said, and there was steel in her voice, reminding him that is was women who were the strong ones, no matter how much the men like to pretend.  "Good."

 

 

5.

"Thank you,"  Jon had said, intercepting he and Robb at the bottom of the steps and pulling Theon into a bone crushing hug.  "For my sister."

Theon just nodded and let himself be pulled away, and it's not until he is sitting up on Robb's bathroom counter, Robb wrapping clean linen around his hand, that he speaks again.  "I'm sorry," He gasps it out, because his lungs are not working and the breath is not coming, and he melts into Robb, breaking down into tears when he feels Robb's hand dig into his hair.  "God, I didn't meant to do it, I'm so, so sorry."

"It's okay."  This alarmed Robb, Theon knew.  He had not seen him cry before, not for real, not since his brothers died, and here he was sobbing into his shoulder.  "What are you sorry for?"

"I'm like them."  He stumbled off the counter and took great lurching steps across the room.  "Don't you see?  I got so angry, so, so angry Robb, and all I wanted to do was hurt him, and I'm  _just. Like. Them._ " Robb wants to follow, he could tell, but now he was treating Theon like he was a wild animal that got trapped in a corner.  "I tried not to be like them."

"Like who?"

"My father.  My brothers.  They liked to hurt people, and they were always angry, so  _angry,_ and I never wanted to be that way.  I thought,"  He took in a strangled gasp, and Robb had him by the wrists then, pulling him down to a tangled heap on the floor.  "that being around you would burn it out of me, but tonight, I..."

"Tonight you protected my sister."  Robb's voice was fierce, strong, sharp as a sword.  He could trust that voice.  "You were doing what you had to do to keep my sister safe, and I love you for it, do you understand?  No matter how bad you think it makes you, or how bloody you think your hands are, I love you for what you did."

It calms him to hear that, because he knows that Robb takes those words seriously, knows that he only says them when he means it.  "I can't tell, sometimes,"  Theon whispers the words, letting Robb support all his weight.  He was so tired, now.  "I try to watch and to know if I'm crossing a line, if I'm becoming more like them, but things are unfair and life sucks so bad and I'm so damn angry all the time, and I just can't tell, if I'm better or worse or just the same, and it terrifies me that I don't know.  The idea that I could become a monster like them and not even see it coming.  I don't trust myself."

"But you trust me, right?"  Robb didn't need to wait for an answer, he knew that Theon did.  "Then let me watch you.  Let me tell you. And then believe me."  He wipes tears away from Theon's cheeks with his thumbs, and even though it was stupid and the farthest thing from the point right now, all Theon could think was  _gay, gay, gay._ "Because you're not a monster, and you aren't like them, at all."

"You promise?"  His voice is weak and wavering.  His mother's voice, not his father's.  But he doesn't want to be his mother, either.  Ending up like her would scare him even more.  ( _Better a monster than a mouse._ ) 

"I promise."  Robb answers, and there is enough force behind those words that Theon sags into him, calm enough that he thinks he could sleep right here on the cold tile floor, if only his head would stop pounding.  "Now and always."


	11. Chapter 11

1.

Theon knows he's making a mistake.

He knows it as soon as he looks up from his drink and sees the boy across the bar already looking at him.  He knows it even as he smiles and slides off the barstool, when he curls his fingers around the glass to steady himself, and makes his way aroun the room to a new seat, one where there's a cute boy staring down at him.  It doesn't take any effort to smile at him and start a conversation, because he's still in safe territory, where he can turn away and walk out the door before he crosses a line that he can't come back from.

But then the boy (who's name he still hasn't learned) smiles and leans down to whisper something in his ear in front of everyone, and Theon agrees, the two of them standing up so fast and giggling and drunken that they crash together.  Everyone is staring at him, but that doesn't stop Theon from holding hands with this boy and letting him pull him out the door, immediately turning down an abandoned alley that would give them something like privacy.

 _Bad idea,_ a voice was warning.  It sounds like Robb and that annoys him, so he shoves the thought away and presses himself closer to the new boy, trying to drown himself the feeling of new hands and a new voice and words that Robb definitely wouldn't have said.  There is nothing sweet and sentimental here, with his back scratching against the brick of the wall and a dumpster only five feet from him, but there is something comforting about what they are doing, when they are both on the same page with no feelings to complicate things or trip them up.  There is only hands and mouths and skin, and when they leave there is satisfaction but also something like shame, the two of them giving each other sheepish smiles and turning in opposite directions.

They won't see each other again.  That boy was just driving through to get to someplace better, or maybe he only came here to run away from something at home, but regardless, Theon would never see him again.   _What is worth it?_ That voice again, only now he was being forced to pay attention to it, to wonder what exactly was going to happen now that he walked out of that bar with a boy for everyone to see.   _Will a handful of moments make up for the hell you're going to pay later?_

 _It would have happened eventually,_ he thinks angrily, climbing into the car and letting the keys dangle in the ignition without making a move to do anything else.   _And I have a right to do that, if I want to._

 

 

2.

Theon learns some things about his town, after that.

Apparently they don't care about him being gay or liking to be with guys more than he likes girls, so long as he doesn't walk around with pride flags across the back of his coat and start demanding that everyone pay attention to gay rights.  And maybe in a way that's wrong, that their acceptance comes with conditions, but theon is just so grateful that nothing has changed that he can't bring himself to care about it.   _It's alright if you show up at the game with a guy tonight,_ one of the guys he eats lunch with says, talking around a mouthful of roast beef,  _but don't start talking all gay, alright?_

There's probably something wrong with the last part of that statement, something bigoted or discriminatory that he would pull out and focus on later, but in the moment Theon is only hearing the sweet relief of acceptance, of having it told to him in a very blunt, very rude, very teenage way that no one will care.  He sees Jeyne, and she gives him a dazzling smile that looks a bit like congratulations, and Jon watches him with concern curling in his eyes, but Theon doesn't let himself be bothered by anyone's opinions, until it gets to Robb.

"So, you're, uh, gay now?"  He stumbles over the sentence and the words fall to the ground between them, thud, thud, thud, breaking apart what Theon had thought would be a nice conversation.  Instead, he's watching Robb not look at him on purpose and struggle with his words, still too afraid of himself to not stumble over the word gay.

"I don't know what I am.  I just knew that I wanted to kiss that boy, you know?"  Robb did know.  Theon knew he knew, and he wondered if this conversation felt like a twisting knife in Robb's guts, the same way it was to Theon.  "Do I have to know?"

They never put a label on what the two of them were doing, before, and besides that one announcement to his family, Robb hadn't really talked about what he was, either.  Theon didn't think it was necessary, really, because in the end it boils down to what someone wants and who they love, nevermind what other people say.  "No,"  Robb says, and he bumps his shoulder against Theon to comfort him, maybe thinking of that day on the steps where Theon calmed him down and told him that it was okay, whoever and whatever Robb decided he was, it was okay.  And now he was going to return the favor and say that it was okay for him to not know, too, to be a blank slate.  "No, you don't."

 

3.

One thing Theon didn't think about when he was walking out of that bar hand in hand with a boy?  

His father.

His dad doesn't take part in a lot of his decisions these days, as to what he would think or what he would want for theon.  Instead, he was always worrying about Robb, about Ned and cat and sometimes Jon, what they would think of him and whether or not they would be proud.  And even though he knew that walking out of that bar would be a bad thing, a frowned upon thing, he also knew that Cat would just press her lips into a thin line and spoon his supper down onto his plate with more force than normal, and then it would all blow over.  Ned would say that he just needs to be careful, and Jon would make a rude joke that would make Sansa squirm, and Robb would only roll his eyes and say nothing at all.

That's what he thought about, in the split second decision between noticing the smile and getting up to meet him.  He wasn't thinking about his father.  It's not until he walks into his house after a late night out with Robb and sees him still at home, still awake, turned to face the door with beer in hand, that he thinks maybe he should have.

"Dad?"  That word sounds wrong in his mouth.  He can't remember the last time he used that word.  It was always sir, now,  _yes sir, no sir._

"I heard something today, when I was out with the boys."  His voice was like gravel grinding together, the result of too many years smoking and yelling over the sound of machinery.  "They said you were running around with some boy now.  And I told them yes, I know, that you and that Stark kid were thick as thieves, no matter how much I tried to tell you not to be.  And you know what they said?"

He did.  He did know what they said, and he knew what was about to come out of his father's mouth before he said it.  He was already throwing his hands up to shield himself, like that could stop him from hearing it, like that could protect him.  

"They said that Robb wasn't who they meant.  That you were dating a boy now, that somewhere along the line you turned into some faggot, and they all caught you one night out in the alley wrapped around some other fag.  Is that true?"  

He was calm.  That was the strange thing, how calm his father was, and Theon wondered how long he had been sitting here in the darkness, staring at the door and figuring out what he was going to say when it finally opened.  This is more like the father he remembered, the one who was always in control and was always strong, though he couldn't remember him being quite this cruel.  

"Yes."  Theon wouldn't lie.  He would pretend that it didn't matter, that he was drunk, anything, but he wouldn't lie, because lying about this means he would have to lie about other, better things in the future, about Robb and his feelings and what they did, and he wouldn't cheapen that, not even to please his father.  "It's true."

There is silence.  Theon expects for him to scream, to throw things and to hit him, the way he would if Theon even just walked too loudly or if something in his day hadn't gone the way he wanted it.  His father was a ticking time bomb on the best of days, and this time, Theon was fully expecting to be hurt. But instead, his dad just reaches down to the floor beside him and pulls out a duffel bag, tossing it at his feet.

"You've got ten minutes to pack."  He takes a long drink and then spits some of it out at Theon's feet, just to show how much he doesn't care.  "Then get out, you hear me?"

Theon does.

 

 

4.

Theon doesn't remember what happened in the moments after.

He remembered going up the steps, stuffing as many shirts and jeans and journals down into the bottom of the duffle bag as could fit, reaching his hand back into the space between the mattress and the wall to pull out the emergency money he had bene saving, and then walking down the stairs.  He wasn't afraid, either, just had the sense that this is the moment that everything in these past few years had been leading up to.

Theon always knew he would have to leave, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't feel bad about it.  In his heart he's still the little kid that wants his family to be like every other family on the street, to have his brothers protect him and have his mother remember his name and have his father look at him with eyes that don't have an alcohol haze over them.  Despite everything, he loves these people, even though they've ripped him apart and formed him into something awful, and he wants them to heal together.  "You're going to be okay, right?"  He stands in the doorway with that duffel bag hanging at his side, wondering where he's going to go or how he's going to finish school now, and that's what comes out of his mouth.  It's probably because even though he's the one being thrown out into the cold, his father looks like the lost one, back lit by the yellow light in the kitchen and staring down at an empty beer bottle like he didn't know when he picked it up.  

His father stared.  Theon wondered if he was thinking that same things, about the nights where Theon would help him up the stairs or the mornings he woke up on the couch with the blanket thrown over him, about the times Theon showed up to work his shift and the days where the electric bill and the groceries would seem to take care of themselves.  About how he couldn't do this on his own.

This was the moment where they could still fix things.  Where his dad could be his dad and tell him to forget leaving, that they would deal with it in the morning, where things wouldn't look so terrible.  They might actually start talking, then, make Asha come home more and turn his father sober and Theon would even agree to pretend to be straight. It would be a small price to pay, to have something that resembles a real family.

But that doesn't happen.  Instead, his father sneers and struggles to his feet, trades in the empty bottle for a fresh one.  "Get out."

It's the last words he would hear his father say to him, but Theon found that he didn't want to stay too much, anyways.


	12. Chapter 12

1.

That first night, he doesn't know where he's going.

Theon wanders, for the most part, stopping at the ends of streets just to let the song on the radio drizzle in time with the rain and let the engine idle, replaying it all in his head.  It goes over and over, images that flash by in his mind while he rests his head against the steering wheel, letting the light change from green to red and back again.

_A boy, a smile, beer sloshing over the side of a cup and dripping from his fingers, the brick of the wall behind him digging into his back._

_Saying yes, offering a smirk when people are asking for the truth, admitting to nothing and everything at the same time just because he was tired of hiding._

_A father laying wait in the darkness all night, waiting for his son to come home just so he can turn him away again._

And now this.

It occurs to him, as he drives through the town when no one else is awake, becoming familiar with the street signs and the secrets you can learn when you glance into windows, that he has no where to go.  He'd already turned eighteen, so there was no government program waiting to swoop him off to safety.  Asha was almost unreachable, and even though he knew she would fix things for him if he called, he didn't want to lay another problem down at her feet.  And Robb, even though that was the most obvious choice, was away on a week long trip with Jon to go visit different colleges.

He's alone, and cold, and the gas in the car is running low.  At first, he just intends to go to the garage and fill it up and apologize later.  But in the end, when he stops moving and finally faces the problem, he can't seem to bear to move on.

"It'll do,"  He tells himself, dumping his duffel bag on the floor and crawling up onto the workbench, pulling a ratty old blanket up over him.  "It'll do."

 

 

2.

He calls Robb.  Not because he thought that Robb would be able to swoop in and save him.  More because it'd been three days since he last saw him, and another four since he got home, and he figured that talking to Robb could make him feel better about anything.  Even if that anything was being curled up in the corner of the garage you worked at, shivering in the cold.

It takes him three tries for him to call, and even then, the words about what happened don't come.  Instead, he asks Robb about the trip and how he likes the schools, if he thinks he'll be getting some merit scholarships, whether or not he thinks he and Jon will end up going to the same one.  Robb is happy to talk about it, too, about the classes he could take and the dorms ( _the one was like a shoebox, Theon, seriously, pay forty grand a year and they don't even give you room to turn around?_ ), about the possible majors and the people he was meeting, and even a few stories about the stupid things he and Jon were doing now that they had been given a taste of freedom.  It makes Theon hurt a bit, to now be able to picture it so clearly, the moment when Robb would move on to a life that would not have him in it.  

Still, it was nice to be able to hear his voice and let the conversation carry him away from what's happening, until the excitement seemed to die out of Robb's voice and he finally gave Theon the opening he had been waiting for.  "So, what's with you?"  There's a short squabble on the other end of the phone, one that sounds like Jon had just found out that Robb had ordered pineapple on the pizza.  "When you first answered, I thought something was wrong."

"Well."  The words stop, and then start again, coming out all in one breath.  "My dad kicked me out."

There is a stunned silence on the other end of the phone.

"I know you can't do anything about it."  Theon had come to that conclusion the first night he sat shivering in here, when he was looking around for someone to save him.  It was then that he decided that his sister and the Starks had been helping him along his whole life.  It was time that he stop making himself into a victim and figure out how to do it on his own.  "I just wanted to tell you.  Touch base kind of thing."

"Jesus."  Robb didn't even ask what it was about.  Normally, when a friend tells you that they had been thrown out, you ask what they had done to make their parents so angry.  It's a testament to how awful things had been that this moment didn't come as a surprise to anyone.  "Where are you?  Are you at my house?"

"No."  Theon runs a hand over his face.  "I'm crashing in a garage of one of my friends.  I'm safe here.  There's water.  And I've got enough money to buy me fast food for a while."

"I'll come home."  this is why Theon hadn't called the first day, because he knew that Robb would offer that, and he didn't think he could be strong enough to turn him down that first day.  "I can be there tomorrow morning."

"No.  I'm fine, really.  I just wanted to tell you.  To know that,"   _To know what?_ "To know that you've got my back on this."

"Of course."  He sounds shocked that Theon even asked.  "Now and always.  You know that."

Theon smiled right there in the darkness.  He was lucky, a bit, that even at rock bottom he still has someone to pull him back to his feet.  "Just checking."

 

 

 3.

Asha finds him a week later.

Part of him thinks that it must have been Robb who called her and let her know what was happening.  Theon had been adamant about not telling her, and also that the Starks weren't going to take care of this one for him.  Robb hadn't exactly disagreed, but he had gotten really quiet and stared over at where Sansa and Bran were sitting.   _She should have the choice,_ he had said, jaw set in the way it only is when he's really angry and doesn't think he has the right to admit it.   _She should decide whether or not she has to walk away from you._

The other part doesn't care.

She walks into the garage when he's working the night shift on Monday afternoon ( _John had found out where he was sleeping, and brought in a couch, space heater, and a half broken fridge as long as he would work for an hour or two in the evenings)_.  Theon hadn't looked up at first, assuming by the click of heels on the cement that one of the other guys would jump to take care of it first, and then all of a sudden she was standing in front of him, just as infuriating as he remembered.

"Jesus."  She wrinkled up her nose.  "What's that smell?"

Sweat.  Motor oil.  The t-shirt he hadn't washed in a week.  "What are you doing here?"

"Coming to talk to you, what do you think?"  She hopped up onto the counter, the one that he had slept on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that everyone else was staring at the two of them.  "Heard you got in a fight with dad."

"There was a change of living arrangements.  That's all."  He leaned back down into the engine, choosing to stare at that then at her face.  "Still doesn't explain what you're going here."

"Isn't it obvious?  I'm going to wait for you to get off work, and then we're going to pack up the rest of your stuff while dad's out, and then I'm taking you home.  Someplace with a bed, and real food, and a working shower."  She looked more at ease now, less like a cat wired up to pounce and more like one that had already caught her evening meal.  A more relaxed Asha, but just as tough.  "You can crash at my house for a while."

"Asha."  He didn't want to do this here, with the grease staining his hands and the others all pretending that they aren't listening, even though he knows that they know.  It was obvious from the get go that they had heard it from their mothers and their siblings still in high school, about how the little Theon Greyjoy they worked with had kissed and boy and gotten kicked out for it, and now he was sleeping in the garage.  They come in with shirts that don't fit and food that their wife packed even though they don't like it, and even though Theon is grateful for the help, he doesn't like the feeling that comes when he has to take it.  "I can handle this."

"I know you can.  You can probably handle everything."  She stepped closer and put her hand on his shoulder, in that bracing way she would when they were little and she needed him to keep quiet so she could save them.  And she's here to save him now.  "I'm saying that maybe this time, you don't have to."

 

 

4.

In the haze of everything that had happened, Theon had almost forgotten that life goes on.

He's honestly surprised when he gets the answers from the colleges, one, two, three, four of them, all with decent scholarships that are waiting for him on the Stark's kitchen counter when he comes to their house.  He opens them with Robb standing at his side and Cat biting her nails like its her own kids future that hangs in the balance, and when he yells out that he got accepted, to caught up in the moment to start to worry, Sansa hugs him tight enough to knock the wind out of him and Arya pops a balloon in his face, and Bran does wheelies around the kitchen.  And that night, there is a clap on the shoulder from Ned and Robb beside him the whole time, repeating over and over that he knew Theon could do it.

The thing is, though, that Theon doesn't know if he can.  He doesn't have a safety net to fall back on like all the other kids do, and he doesn't have a place to come home for the holidays, and there isn't a parent waiting to catch him if he screws up, or even if he just gets sick and needs someone to pay for the doctor's visit.  He doesn't have a way to get himself there, or really even the confidence that with everything life has thrown at him and the particular place where he's coming from, he'll be able to measure up to everyone else.

So he Theon does what he always does.  He runs.

He goes to the bar and orders a beer, which shouldn't have been given to him but was, and drowns it in one long gulp. The second one he takes slower, small sips and staring around the room for a distraction, which is when the seat beside him is taken.  "Sorry, but I'm not in the mood for-,"

The words come automatically, because when they die, he turns to find Ned Stark staring back at him, holding his own beer that Theon is pretty sure he has no intention to drink.  "Mr. Stark."

"Theon."  He doesn't make a comment about the drink even though his eyes linger on it.  "I heard you were having some trouble making a decision about college."

Theon chokes on the explanation at first, but eventually he gets the story out.  About not being good enough, about being afraid, about his father, about how he wants to stay here to help with his mother.  About how he needs to save up some more cash, how he wasn't ready to leave this yet.  How he just needed to time to get a grip on things, to give himself a better position to deal with moving on.  ( _And maybe, even though he didn't say it, how he wasn't ready to do this without Robb._ )  About his sister, about how he needs to take care of her for once in his life and repay all the times she came through for him, how he wasn't like the other kids who got to have parents to help him along the way.  "I don't want to disappoint you," Theon says, and until the words come out of his mouth he wasn't even aware it was true.  "But I think I'm going to take a year, get some money saved, get some solid ground to stand on. All my scholarships will hold, I already checked.  I just need that, okay?"

Ned nods.  "Okay, kid."  He threw some money on the table and led him out of the bar, and once they're out in the cold, Ned wraps his own coat around Theon's shoulders.  "Sounds like a plan."

 

 

5.

Theon doesn't mention his whole decision about college anymore, and Ned must have told Cat, because suddenly there's no more questions about his future from the Stark family.  Even Robb seems to get that he doesn't want to talk about it, though it's not until one Friday night where they're both lying side by side listening to the shouting coming from the party next door that he brings it up.

"Dad told me."   Theon is careful not to look over at him.  He doesn't want to see what he might be finding there: judgment, disappointment, or worse, that he isn't surprised at all, like he was always expecting him to be the kind of person to give up.  "And I just want you to know that I meant it, when I said that I was going to stick by you.  Now and always is a real thing to me.  And I also want you to know that no matter what you decide, whether you go to school this year or next year or five years from now, no one can take away all the great things you've done, the great person you are.  I've always seen the person you are, and now you get to, too."

Theon has to swallow hard to clear his throat of whatever was suddenly clogging it. Still, he can feel the words stick in his throat, all of them not right, all of them not good enough, so he fumbles for his hand in the darkness instead.

(For a brief moment, he thinks of turning to him, of breaking down the barrier they had constructed at his request and kissing him like he always wants to, to give in to this awful temptation that's always sitting right in front of him.  But he doesn't.  He doesn't deserve that, he shouldn't be allowed to ruin Robb even further.)

Instead, he just holds onto his hand, let the gratitude and relief wash over him.  

"Thank you," He says, and that will never be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking about changing the title. Do you think "Of Mice and Monsters" would be a better title than the current one? Taking a vote. Please comment


	13. Chapter 13

1.

The lights on the stage were bright.

It's a stupid thing to think, when you cross the floor to get to your diploma.  Theon wishes that he would have come up with something a bit more clever, something nostalgic about leaving the past behind, or maybe something mean and crude about never having to come back again.  Instead, all he gets is a stupid observation about the lights.  (He's a writer.  He should do better.)

Still, he gets to walk across that stage and have it announced that he was graduating as fifth in the class, get to stand in front of the principal and shake his hand, have final proof to everyone that at least this far in his life, he wasn't a screw up. He felt that, the pride of proving everyone in his family wrong as that piece of paper got handed to him, and he thinks that everyone else can see it to.

"Congratulations, Mr. Greyjoy."  The smile on the principal's face was more of a grimace but his words were warm.  Theon held onto his hand a bit longer, just to anchor himself against the see of faces looking back at him.  There were so many he couldn't even pick out Robb, even though he knew he was there.  "You made it."

( _Not quite,_ theon thought, thinking of all the bills that were waiting to be paid and the book he was in the process of writing, the county lines that felt like a cage and the want burning deep in his stomach, the shadows snapping at his heels and the need to be something better.   _But one day I will._ )

 

2. 

The other kids went home that night to parties and presents and congratulations.  They're looking at these last few weeks spread out in front of them as the bittersweet taste of summer slipping by, a revolving door of firsts and lasts and making memories with the people they love in order to prepare for that last good bye. 

For everyone else, this summer is the dying days of their childhood.

Theon had to grow up along time ago.

He didn't get any party, just jumped down from the stage after it was all over and stopped to smile when Asha asked him to, just him alone with his cap and gown and fake diploma clutched in his fist.  It makes him angry, as everyone is smiling, because this does not feel like the start of something new and exciting- it feels like an ending.

And its not fair.

That's what he wanted to scream at all of them, how its unfair that they got his dreams even though none of them worked as hard as Theon did, but he doesn't, because Robb was there to wrap an arm around his shoulder and guide him home.  He walked him out those double doors for the last time and out into the sunshine, then guided him to the hot car and drove them out to the edge of town.

Robb parks the car on the side of the road, in a patch of dirt.  Theon wonders if Robb realizes that this is the spot where he had pulled the car off the road so they could kiss each other so many nights ago, and if he did, if this was intentional or just convenience.  He decides it doesn't matter either way- his feelings for Robb, like so many other things, have turned into the smoky haze of a dream that will never come true, always just out of his reach.

"So, I got you something."  Robb reached over to the glove compartment to pull out a box, then stuffed it into Theon's hands.  He looked excited, but also kind of afraid, like he thought this might end badly but was hoping it wouldn't.  "For graduation."

Theon wanted to say something then, but the words stuck in his throat, so he just opened the box instead.  And then he wished he hadn't, because nestled inside was a watch that Theon loved but would never have been able to afford on his own and really had no reason to wear anymore.  Not when he was going to be working a garage for the rest of his life.

(Not that there was anything wrong with that.  He was quite good at it, and it was a comforting kind of simple, but still.  He wanted more.)

"Robb."  The words were still sticking, but now they were shaking, too, trembling as they came off his tongue.  He didn't like that.  It made him feel like he was telling him more than he wanted to say.  "This is..."   _Too much,_ he wanted to say, but then he thinks of all the graduation parties and expensive gifts and how all he was going to be able to get was a half burnt cake that Asha cooked him and Robb beside him as he blew out the lone celebratory candle.  "Thank you."

"Before you tell me I shouldn't, I'm going to tell you that I wanted to."  Robb's hand was covering his own, now, and Theon thinks that if things were different, he would close those last few inches and kiss him and not be afraid of ruining him, because what he saw today, making it to the end of the line, to the college experience and graduating fifth in the class and having a shining future spread out in front of him, was proof that he wouldn't ruin him.  But he doesn't, because he didn't make it that far.  "Everyone else is going to go home to people telling them how special they are.  I wanted you to know that you were important, too."

(It is not until he gets home and slips it on that Theon notices the engraving on the back, the  _now and always_ written in tiny, perfect cursive.  It's the first time he cries.)

 

 

 

3.

Asha is drunk.

Theon should have known it from the moment he walked in through the door, because his whole life has been a revolving door of people in different shades of inebriation, but it was so out of character for her that he doesn't even consider it until he sees the tears on her face and the bottle on the table.  "Asha?"

It makes him feel like something is wrong, because he can't think of her doing this when she was happy.  But she looks fine when she turns around to face him, even if there was something a bit more dangerous in her smile than normal.  "There he is."  She held her arms out to him but he doesn't come forward, because now he's wondering if this is something she does all the time, if he has escaped one nightmare just to run into the arms of another.  "There's my brother.  Aren't you going to come say hi?"

"What's wrong?"  He throws his bag down on the ground, moves the glass out of her reach.  "What happened?"

"nothing happened.  Nothing ever happens.  Don't you get it?"  She threw her head back to shake her hair out, and then she laughed, a short bark of a sound that cut through the room.  "We're stuck here.  The two of us.  We pretend that we're not, but we are.  Stuck here, just like our family is, just as bad, and pretty soon it'll grind us down like it did to mom and dad."

"Don't talk like that."  He doesn't want to hear her say those things, not when he was so happy.  Theon puts the mail in his hand down on the counter and reaches out to her, but she just shoves him back, sends him stumbling.  It makes the papers fall, the magazines and letters and envelopes containing more demands floating down to the ground.  "We're going to be fine."

"I told myself that, once."  She hiccupped, and then he saw that she had been crying this whole time, tears slipping down her cheeks one by one.  He had not seen her cry before.  Theon had not been aware she ever did.  "I really thought you were going to make it."

"So did I."  He was angry, again, and he was so tired of that feeling, so he just sighs instead of yelling and sets a bottle of water in front of her.  "Sober up, Asha.  You've got work tomorrow."

(She doesn't, right away, at first she drinks, but then she sets her jaw and gets to her feet, grabbing the water and stumbling out the door to the porch where she could stare out at the empty street while the anger in her dies away.  It leaves Theon to clean up the mess, down on his knees under the table, wiping up the spilled water and gathered up the papers she had thrown to the ground.)

(One of them was the reason he had come in at all instead of going straight to Robb's, the literary magazine he'd been trying to get into forever, and there on the ground, the corners damp with the water she threw at him, was the thing he'd been dying to see: his name in black and white on page twenty-two, proof that maybe, maybe, he was moving forward from here.) 


	14. Chapter 14

1.

They're domestic.

It's the only word that Theon can think to describe them, when Robb comes down to hang out at the garage with him to kill the hour between school and tutoring.  He curls up in a beat up arm chair, and Theon works.  Sometimes they keep up a steady stream of conversation, an easy banter about school and customers and the gigs that Theon is working ( _because he's actually gotten pretty steady work with his poet stuff, thank you very much_ ), about the rest of the Starks and Asha and how Theon likes his classes at the community college.  (Because that's another thing that Robb talked him into, about moving forward.)

Most of the time, though, it's quiet.  Today is one of those days, where Theon watches Robb out of the corner of his eye as he does his work, soft rock floating out of the speakers that Robb had bought him two birthdays ago.  He's working on homework, curls falling over his face and a pencil stuck between his teeth as he scans through the books, the collar of his sweater slipping down his shoulder on one side.  It's peaceful.

Except today it isn't, because Robb's got this  _look_ on his face, like he's trying to figure out a problem and doesn't see the answer.  It makes Theon anxious to see it, so finally he caves in and speaks up.  "You alright?"  He always gets worried when Robb looks like there's something wrong, because he never wants to see Robb be hurt, especially because Theon knows that you can't always protect people.  That's what scares him the most, the not being able to protect him.  

Robb's head snaps up like he'd forgotten where he was.  "Yeah."  He forced a smile, which made Theon think that it certainly wasn't okay.  "Everything's fine."  But it wasn't, because he was getting up and stuffing books in his bag without looking at him, even though it was a full twenty minutes before he had to leave.  Theon had that feeling again, where the ground was shifting under his feet and he was seconds away from falling.  "I'll see you later, yeah?"

Theon swallowed hard, and the words seemed to stick again, like they always do when he needs them most.  "Yeah.  Alright."  

He doesn't say anything else.  Theon doesn't watch him leave, either, just bends back to the engine and throws himself into it, trying to bury himself in work and doesn't stop until he hears footsteps behind him.  For a moment, he thinks that its Robb coming back, but then he hears the heaviness of the steps and realizes that its his boss.

"I would tell you not to let him back here,"  He says, his voice creaking with the affects of smoking too much for too many years before he had the sense to quit.  He was a kind man and a good boss, and Theon liked how tough he was, like he could carry all his own problems without breaking and still have room for everyone else's.  "But you always seem to get more work done with him here."

Theon straightens up, wipes the grease on his hands off on the towel at his hip.  "He inspires productivity."

"He treat you right?"  There was a twinkle in his eye, the same way there always is when he asks Theon these kinds of questions.  "I'll have a talk with him if he doesn't."

"Not my boyfriend, Greg."  He'd been surprisingly easy going about the whole being gay thing, and incredibly supportive when it came to Theon's situation.  Apparently, in his words,  _he had a niece who rolled that way and he was totally fine with it._ Theon would take it.  "I'll let you know if it changes."

Greg laughed, and then he was walking away again, back to the front desk.  "You do that, Greyjoy."

 

 

2.

That was the summer of a lot of things.

It was the summer that Theon got black out drunk for the first time.  It was the summer marking the second time that Theon had to kick Joffrey's ass, only this time he didn't feel bad about it.  It was the summer that Bran became convinced he would join the field of STEM cell research to help heal himself and Cat cried for two weeks because of it, the summer of Theon being actually published for the first time, and the summer Arya decided she was going to be a full time assassin for the FBI.  It was also the summer that Robb broke down and confessed to them all about the extreme anxiety he's been dealing with for ages.  

And it was only getting worse as the school year started, which meant that Theon spent a large amount of time talking him down.

"I'm sorry."  Robb was gasping it out, and Theon had Robb's wrists clutched in his own hands.  They've found that this helps to calm him down, as long as it was Theon who did it.  (Though everything Theon read said  _not_ to do what he was doing, but whatever.  Robb's always been special.)   "I'm sorry that you have to keep doing this."

Theon is never sure what sets it off.  Whenever Robb talks about how it feels, he says its like a tidal wave that builds and builds and builds until he reaches the tipping point and it all spills out.   He thought today had been a good day for both of them, but then he was sprawling across Robb's bed and Robb was doing at his desk doing applications, and then Theon looked over to see that Robb was sitting there.

Just sitting there and crying, shoulders shaking and hands trembling and scratches on his arms where he had clawed at himself, but completely silent.  

Theon had thought they had come to an agreement a while ago, where Robb had confessed to Theon and Theon only how bad the things in his head were and how hard it was sometimes for him to even get out of bed, and how he didn't want to tell anyone, Theon included, because he didn't want to push his problems onto them.  It was a long conversation where they actually talked through their feelings, and Theon had made him understood that this friendship was a two way street, that Theon would be more than happy to reach out a hand to lift him out of the darkness.  And he thought that it was true, that when Robb needed help, he turned to Theon.  It was only then, when Robb was a few feet away and still unable to force himself to speak up, that he realized that it might be harder for him to ask for help than Theon had thought.

"Don't be sorry."  This was exhausting for both of them.  Theon could only imagine the weight that this puts on Robbs shoulders, having his mind turn against him like that, where you have to fight every moment to get control of your thoughts.  It was one of the few times that Theon counted himself lucky he had not been born in Robb's shoes.  "God, be whatever you want, but never be sorry for needing me."

Because that was the problem with it, the needing, the awful codependency that the two of them have developed to the point where one of them cannot seem to function without the other.  Sometimes Theon thinks about Robb leaving him behind and it tears him in two, paralyzes him to the point where sometimes he wants to push Robb away before he can turn his back on him.  But Theon is never quite strong enough to do that.

"It's just so hard,"  Robb says, fingers twisting to bunch up the fabric of Theon's shirt, head slamming back into the wall, once, twice, and then nothing, the storm over as soon as it had come.  "It's not fair that these things are so hard."

Things like forcing a smile.  Things like walking through a crowded hallway and being able to not jump when he hears a locker door slam.  Things like making it through a family dinner, and filing out applications, or even getting out of bed.  If theon had his way, he would fix it for him, but its rarely that simple.

 

 

3.

There's also the issue of leaving.

Theon had thought about the future as sort of a distant concept, where he would get to leave his dad behind and maybe be able to afford better care for his mother, where he would have a college dorm to sleep safely in without any fear of strange drunken men stumbling in (just familiar teenage ones) and having a stack of books published with his name across the front cover.  It was a hazey dream that he never had to think much about in terms of the finer details, other than the fact that he thought that things would be better.

(After all, it's not like things could be worse.)

But now the future's here.  Maybe it is better, but it's different, not what he thought he had been reaching towards all these years. 

Now it's a decent paycheck once a week and the freedom to spend it on anything he wanted.  It's cooking with Asha and then ordering in take out when the inevitably burn it.  It's growing up with Robb, still, even though he thought the deadline on that friendship was up a year ago.  It's laying flowers on his brother's graves and feeling something like peace for the first time, it's sending letters to his father that he knows will never be read but hopes will at least be opened, and afternoons spent in the hospital room of his mother, reading by the light coming in the window sill.  It's cars to fix, and homework from his community college classes, and hearing a round of applause when he reads his stories out to a crowded café.

It's not perfect, but it is something better.  The only problem is that Robb is heading towards his something better, too.

"You're certain it's good?"  Robb was watching him an anxious face, the nerves so clear he might as well have tattooed them across his forehead.  Of all the things to send Robb spiraling, the college applications have been the worst.  (Robb doesn't want to hear it, but personally, he thinks that the sudden change has a lot to do with this newfound anxiety, or at least the worsening of it.  Robb has never been good with change.)

(Neither of them have, actually.)

"I promise it's good."  The essay was brilliant, actually, all of it dedicated to his siblings and what it means to take care of them, the responsibility he feels and the hopes he has for the lessons he has tried to teach them.  It talked about Bran's accident, and Sansa's issues with Joffrey, and how he wanted to make the world softer for Arya to walk through, because as tough as she was he could not bear for her to find out that some things just can't be beaten.  He talked about his overwhelming love for Jon and how even though he wasn't technically a true Stark, he was still a brother, a comment on the different ways a family could be shaped, and how he couldn't wait to see what Rickon will become, how he prays the light in him will never burn out.  And he talked about Theon, too, in a way that made it hard for him to swallow.   _He's not the brother I was born with, but he's the one I chose,_ he had said, and Theon wanted to stop reading right then and tell him to screw college, that they could stay in this tiny town and be happy.  But he didn't, just kept reading and marking suggestions with his favorite pen, because the world was too big for Robb to hold back for one boy.  "It's the most brilliant thing I've ever read."

"Not good for me, you mean?  But like, good as in it'll get me into college good?"

It would.  It would get him into college, and there would be a whole new group of people for him to fall in love with and who will learn to love him waiting for him when he goes there, a room mate who will be best man at the wedding and some girl smiling at him from the corner of lectures and proffesors that are just as impressed with him as the high school teachers were.  The whole idea makes Theon's heart ache, when he thinks about how the end of this year will be the beginning of the end for the two of them, the moment they are reaching their finals good bye.

"Yes."   _Screw the essay, screw college, it's brilliant, you're going to get in don't look so afraid about it, but please, please, please stay with me, I'm good for you, aren't I, please say I'm enough for you, because you're everything to me._ "I promise, Robb."

 

 

4.

There are moments in life where Theon thinks that he's actually done with trying to make excuses for people.

Picking Bran up from school and seeing him in tears because the kids at school were making fun of him, telling him there's no possible way that he could get a cool costume for trick-or-treating when he's in a wheelchair, and  _how will you even go up to the people when there are steps to the porches, Bran, I'm just trying to help_ makes Theon want to punch all of those snot nosed brats, even if they are only eleven.  

There's not much you can say to a kid after something like that happens, especially when the kid looks at you from his spot in his wheelchair and you can both see the truth of the situation behind the bullshit.  Theon's seen Robb try to deal with that, how he fumbles with his words and none of them are ever comforting, when the skin around his mouth seems to pinch and tighten the more worried it gets.  Comforting has never been Theon's strong suit, but anger?  He's practically an expert.

So he kneels down in front of him, blocks the kids playing on the playground from view, and says the only thing that he can think of.  "Fuck them, alright?  Fuck.  Them."  He shouldn't be saying it.  Robb would have his head if he knew. Theon doesn't care.  "If they think you can't have a cool Halloween costume, then they're stupid?  And the two of us are anything from stupid, so right now, we're going to go home and make you the best costume that ever existed."

Which is how Robb finds them, with Sansa and Arya both trying their best to follow his instructions to make the costume, which is copied from a picture that Bran showed him a might be a robot from Star Wars.  There's glitter spilled across the floor, and paint streaked across Theon's cheek, and he's sort of embarrassed to be seen crawling around on the floor and cursing because he doesn't understand how to fit the pieces together.  

"What are you doing?"

Theon doesn't know how to answer, but Bran does, piping up from his spot in the center of the room.  "The kids at school told me that a cripple can't have a good costume."  He doesn't sound sad anymore, just matter of fact, and that's even worse.  "Theon said fuck them.  And then he said we were going to make the best costume ever."

Robb blinks, once, twice, and then Theon is being hauled to his feet and dragged out into the hallway.  "Look, I know I shouldn't have said it, but I sort of lost my head-,"

"Shut up."  Theon stops talking, and then he can't talk at all because he is being pulled into tight, bracing hug. It's the kind of moment they have sometimes, the ones Theon really wishes they wouldn't, because it reminds him of all the old feelings that he pushed down to somewhere in his stomach, the ones he tries not to listen to but would be so easy to give in to.  "Just- thank you, alright?"

It didn't occur to him how Robb might have felt about it.  There might have been a time where Theon was only nice to the Stark siblings because he knew how much Robb cared about them, but now, he would let the whole world burn before something bad happened to these kids.  "No problem."  And it wasn't, was the thing, and here was final proof that he was better than his father, made of something that was both stronger and softer at the same time.  It takes a real man to care like Theon does about the Starks.  "Now let's get back there and build a kick ass costume, yeah?"

 

 

5.

They're back in the garage again, Theon bent over the engine of a car with a problem that he can't find and Robb curled up in his chair, and Robb has that  _look_ on his face that had been there a few weeks ago.  Theon can't stand it, suddenly, having that look and not knowing what it meant, so he slams the hood of the car closed and marches over to him, yanks the book away from his face.

"What gives?"  Theon knows that this isn't what he should be doing, that this was the product of a bad test grade and having a difficult repair to finish, but he can't stop himself.  That look scares him.  "You've had that look on your face all day, like you're scared of something but don't want to say it."

Robb looks on the verge of panic, but then he takes a deep breath and seems to steel his nerves.  Then he brings out a packet of papers, stuffs it into Theon's hands.  "This."

"An application?"  It was for the state school a few hours away, somewhere that Theon hadn't known that Robb was even considering looking.  "Are you applying?"

"Yes."  A pause.  "And so are you.  We're going.  Together."

"Robb."  It was a beautiful thing to think about, of having another four years of not having to say good bye, where nothing between them has to change.  It almost stings, the promise of it, and its with an actual ache that Theon shoves the possibility out of his head.  "If you're doing this for me, you shouldn't.  You shouldn't do this just because you want to take care of me."

"I'm not.  It's just that I decided that I don't want to go that far away anymore.  I want to stay close to home, for the kids, and maybe a bit for me, too, because I don't think I can handle starting off without any support system, what with how bad things have been." He taps his temple, the silent explanation that he's been using on his bad days when he can't find the words for what's going on in his mind.  "And I want you there with me, okay?  You're my best friend, and I... I love you, Theon."

Theon doesn't know how he means it.  He would deal with that later, alone, and inevitably come to the conclusion that he meant it as friends, as brothers, even though he knew they would need to stop pretending eventually.  Right now he was just staring at the application in his hands, thinking about all the opportunities that have suddenly opened back up to him.  And Robb would be with him, every step of them way.

"Alright." He took the papers, flipped through the brochure on the front, but it didn't matter.  He was already going.  "I'm in."


	15. Chapter 15

1.

"I just wanted him to like me," Sansa said, miserably, choking back what Theon is horribly afraid must be tears.  "What's so wrong about that?"

 _Nothing, nothing at all except for that he beats you bloody and he's got a sadistic streak that you should be able to sniff out from a mile away, Jesus, Sansa, you think you want this life but I promise that you don't._ The words climb over each other in Theon's mouth until he isn't sure he would have room for anything kinder, so he stays silent, and wants more than anything to reach out to her.  But he doesn't, because no matter how much he cares about all of them, no matter how much he wants to tell Sansa that everything will be okay, this is not his place.

It is Robb's, though, who is kneeling in front of her, blinking back the tears that have welled up in his eyes ever since he got sight of the bruises on her wrists that she had been so desperately trying to hide.  Because if there were bruises now that they didn't notice, it was entirely possible that there had been others, ones they never got the chance to see.  

"He's just a boy."  Robb says, and even though his voice is kept purposefully gentle so as not to scare her, Theon had seen how hard his grip had been when he ripped Joffrey away from her and through him out of the store.  They weren't allowed to go back to the frozen yogurt place anymore.  Arya's going to be so disappointed.  "Just a silly, stupid little boy, and you deserve so much more than that.  A real man would never have laid a hand on you."

They take her home, then, and he and Sansa sit together in the living room while Robb explains the situation to his mother, their anxious voices bleeding through the floor.  "He called me pretty."  Sansa says, pathetically, miserably, and then leans her head on Theon's shoulder.  Theon doesn't exactly know what to do with that, so he does what he had always seen Robb do, wrapping an arm around her in a one armed hug and pressing a kiss down into her hair, purposefully staying silent, because he is not gentle in the face of things like this.  If Robb is the calm, then Theon is the storm.  "I don't suppose you understand something like this."

 _I don't,_ Theon thinks viciously, because he had seen what becomes of people who stay in bad situations for too long, until there really is no chance of things getting better, but even as he thinks it he knows it is a lie.

 

 

 

2.

Before, back when Theon lived at his dad's house, there had been an unspoken agreement between him and Robb that Robb would never, ever show up at his door unannounced.  And even when they did plan to have him over, it was always carefully, cautiously, preparing to sneak out the back door any second.

Not so much when he lives with Asha.

Theon is eating lunch in the kitchen with his sister when Robb hurtles up the steps and throws open the screen door, bursting into the hallway and searching the room wildly for a moment, until he finally spots Theon.  

Asha stands up, a ranch covered fork in hand like she's ready to stab Robb with it.  "What the bloody hell are you doing?"

Robb doesn't pay any attention to her.  He just runs to Theon, takes him by the shoulders and spins him around the room.  "We got them."  He shoves an envelope into his hand, and its got an emblem that Theon knows means it is a letter back from the colleges, and suddenly the future seems to have shown up at his door without him inviting it.  "They're here."

There's a lot of problems with this.  the most obvious of it being that not only did Robb run all the away across town, but he also went through Theon's mail to check.  The second is that if they were to open them in front of each other, there would be no hiding the response or their own reaction to it, for better or worse.

"What's wrong?"  Robb can spot when the mood shifts, because he's always able to read Theon like a book.  

If he was still with his father, Theon might have swallowed it down.  If this had been a year ago, he would have pretended like none of this mattered to him.  But he had grown a lot since then, and he so desperately wanted this.  "What if I don't get in?"

"You will."  Robb says, and that is a promise, and Theon has not yet known him to be wrong about his promises.  "Open them together?"

Theon nods, and tries to hide how his hands are shaking.  "On three."  He takes a deep breath, and then without either of them asking the other, they switch envelopes so he will be opening Robb's.  "One.. Two.. Three."

 

 

3.

 "I'm so proud of you,"  Asha tells him, a week later, when the novelty of being accepted has died away and Robb is not around to hear it.  "So, so proud."

She is crying as she says it, and even though Theon knows that what she is saying is true, he also has the feeling that they are not entirely tears of joy.

( _Abandonment always has a bitter taste, no matter the reasons behind it_.)

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

1.

They start preparing for college almost immediately.

It's like getting up in a tsunami instead of a to-do list, Catelyn keeping them both on track ith the scholarships they need to fill out and the things they need to buy al the new dorm materials and clothes bought one at a time as they go on sale so Theon didn't have to spend all that money at once.  She drags Asha along, too, just to make her feel involved, even though Theon thinks that Catelyn could steamroll her way over the shitty parents for every kid in this town and they would all get the guidance they need.

Theon is grateful.

Still, a part of him won't believe it, even as the sheets and the containers pile up in Asha's guest bed room, even when he and Robb order matching shirts that they can wear to the football games, even when Jon is already starting to map out the weekends where he wants to come and crash in their dorm room. Theon thinks that that part of him that had his future ripped away by his father is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, the thing that would make all of this go away.  

But now its the end.  The end of the waiting, of the uncertainty, the feeling that something would happen and all of this would go up in smoke, like it was just a pipe dream and was never really there.  But now he was sitting on a folding chair in front of his computer with a credit card held in a trembling hand as he reads off the numbers, Robb reaching across him in order to type, Asha standing behind him both and biting her thumbnail so close to the quick it was bleeding.

And then Robb presses enter.

"That's it."  He is laughing, and so is Theon, and then he is crying.  Robb grabs him by the shoulders and drags him down to the ground, and the two of them fall into a heap, collapsing in on each other, laughing, crying, crying so hard that Theon can't breathe because he never actually let himself believe it but he was finally, finally going to get out of here, and god he just loved Robb so much.  "You're in, Theon."

"You promise?"  Theon asks, because he has never found a thing in this whole wide world that has kept its promises quite like Robb has, and he would not put his faith in anything else.

Robb does not look at him like it is something stupid, just raises Theon's hand to his mouth and presses a kiss down to the knuckles, once, twice, a third time.  "Promise,"  He says, his voice rough, and this is a moment that seems too private and important to be happening in the middle of a messy living room with his sister printing out the receipt for the deposit.  "Now and always, I promise."

 

 

2.

He goes to see his mother.

Theon hadn't been to visit since the night his father threw him out.  He can feel the shame of that curling up in his stomach when he walks down the hall to the room he knew belonged to her, like everyone around him knew who he was and the awful things he's done, how he's the type of boy who has so royally screwed up his life that he did not have time to take care of his mother.  It hurts him, to have it been so long, but he just did not have room to care about her and take care of himself at the same time.

When he pushes open the door, the smell of lilac hits him like a punch the face. She picks them out in the garden and leaves them to die all over her room, Theon knew, scattering them behind the bed and across the floor, stuffing them into her pillows and underneath the sink, even stuffing them up in the light fixtures.  Asha would get complaints about it from the cleaning staff, and eventually everyone stopped caring, and his mother just kept picking, picking, picking, like she remembered she liked the flower but couldn't remember how many was enough for a bouquet.

Theon's not sure how she remembers where to find them.  It's not like she can remember anything else.

"Hey mom."  His voice is soft so as not to startle her, but when he sits down the chair squeaks.  He winces at the sharpness of the sound but his mother doesn't, just keeps staring out the widow, her hands laid flat in her lap with the palms up, like she was trying to let the sun warm them.  "It's me."

He does not know why he starts like that.  Theon doesn't know why he bothers to come at all, when she is not always lucid, and when on the days she does recognize him it only causes her more pain.  That's all he is, really, a boy full of pain.

"I know I haven't been to see you in a while.  Some things happened between me and dad, and it all got crazy for a while."  He wishes, selfishly, that she would be okay, would wake up one day healthy and whole and ready to face the grief that she felt so strongly it broke her all apart.  Wishes that he would have a mother, one that existed to care rather than to be cared for.  "But things are alright.  I don't want you to worry."

He tells her about how things are going for him.  About Asha, and how they moved in together, and how they've moved on to trying to cook Italian this week, even though things rarely turn out how the youtube video says they will.  About Sansa and Joffrey and how he punched him, and even though it was violent and he lost his temper he realized there's a difference between what he had done and what his father did.  About school, about the garage, about everything Catelyn is doing for him. And about Robb.  So much about Robb

It takes the better part of the afternoon, and when he gets up to leave, he touches her on the shoulder instead of a hug.  He wishes he hadn't as soon as he makes contact because she jumps something awful, twisting around to face him with a look in her eye that made him realize that she probably didn't hear a word of anything she said.

 _Stupid,_ he swears at himself.   _You could have walked away from this pretending it was a good day._

"My sons,"  She croaks, spit streaming from the corner of her mouth, voice rusty with disuse.  She reaches up to touch him on the cheek and her hand feels like sandpaper, her nails so long that they scratch against his skin.  "Where are my sons?"

 _Right here,_ he thinks, catching at her hand and lowering her back into the chair, pressing the button that will summon the nurse, one of the same nurses that surely wonder why none of her family comes to see her, the one that must think he is an awful son.   _I have always been right here._

 

 

 3.

When the results for class rank comes in, Robb is at the top.

It should have been a good ting.  And it might have been, except now on top of everything else that Robb had to worry about, he was also worried about the speech he had to give.  And Theon had known that he had a problem with anxiety and an even bigger problem with public speaking, but even he didn't anticipate how bad it was going to be the night before graduation.

"I'm fine."  Robb didn't look fine.  He looked pathetic, actually, curled up on the floor of the bathroom with his head close enough to the toilet he wouldn't have to move far if he needed to throw up again.  He'd been sick after every meal for the past three days, but now it was after midnight and he was on an empty stomach, so it was just dry heaving, over and over and over.  "You don't need to be in here.  It's gross."

"I'm not leaving you."  He rummages through the closet until he finds a wash rag instead, wets it with cold water and then crouches down in front of Robb.  He had thought that Robb would either take it from him or bat his hand away, but he didn't do either, just stayed silent as he ran it over his face and then over his wrists, like the chill of it might calm him down.  "Don't be ridiculous."

"I am ridiculous."  Robb mutters, and he looks on the verge of tears again, so Theon settles down beside him and wraps an arm around him, let's Robb fall into his side.  He can feel him shaking.

"You're going to be fine."  Theon had told him this a million times already and he would say it a million more if he had to, but he was getting worried, because six hours from now Robb would have to be waking up an getting ready to go to graduation and he showed no signs of getting ready to sleep.  "You always do great."

"But what if I don't?"  Robb was letting his thoughts get away from him again, going down an endless chain of what if's, following the chain of misfortune that in his head will inevitably lead to diaaster.  "Everyone's expecting this great thing, and they're all counting on me, and what if I get up there and it's awful Theon?"

Theon moved to sit in front of him.  "Then it's awful, and we come back here and get properly drunk, and the next day everyone in your life will love you just as much as they did before you went up and gave that speech, and none of it will make a bit of difference to me, because I'll be just as proud of you as I always was, you hear me?"  Talking always helped get Robb off the edge, more than anything else.  Theon's gotten used to rambling on and on without warning, having to jump into stories and expanations without having time to formulate what he was saying.  "But right now you need to calm down.  It's time to sleep."

"I can't sleep."  He sounds petulant, but he also sounds stripped raw, like even the thought of trying exhausts him.  "I can't stand being alone in the dark, with this looping around in my head."

"Then I'll be with you.  Just for tonight."  He stands up and holds his hands out, staring down at Robb, who hasn't budged.  "Let me help you, Robb."

(Robb takes his hands eventually, and then Theon leads them to the bed, pulls back the covers and slides underneath them.  He spends the night with Robb spread across his chest, taking more than his share of space, Theon's hand buried in Robb's hair and his voice crashing down over them both, a hiss of noise that beats back that crescendo that must be rising in Robb's head, until he finally feels Robb's breathing even out.  Even then, he does not really go to sleep.)

 

 

4.

There are tears on Theon's cheeks.

Tears, because he had just heard Robb give the most amazing speech ever written, the whole thing going off without one hitch or stumble.  And when he was done he went back to his seat and stared straight at Theon, an Theon knew that it was his way of saying thank you, of telling him that part of this was because of Theon, that whatever they have done they do together.  Tears, because even though this time last year had been bittersweet, right now was really the end of his childhood and the start of all the many good byes.

"You did great."  Theon says when Robb gets close to him, and pulls him into a hug to hide the tear tracks still on his face, trying to drink up this time alone before they are swarmed by the Stark family.  "Everything was perfect."

"Because of you,"  Robb mumbled into Theon's shoulders, and he can feel the way his hands are shaking against his neck, so he takes them in his own hands until they turn steady.  "Couldn't have made it up there without you."

Theon wonders if he remembers the night before like Theon does, about the hours in the bathroom and then that hour before they fell asleep, the things they whispered to each other, the promises they made, how much of himself Theon was ready to give away.  But now Bran was rolling down the aisle and Arya only seconds away from crashing into both their knees, and Theon knew that it was not the time, so he pulled himself away and tried to keep it together.

"We're a team,"  Theon says instead, and that's true now more so than ever, with the forever friends cemented  in stone by that housing deposit he had put down only a few months ago.  "Now and always."


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter goes out to Monica, who left the most beautiful comment on this story the other day.  
> Sorry my reply to you was so short. Hope this makes up for it

1.

Theon had thought that last summer would be the last draining days of his childhood, all of those moments slipping through his fingers without ever memorizing what it tastes like to bite into the summer's first ice cream cone, or the feeling of being young that comes from driving fast with the windows down and your favorite song, his last chance to figure out what it meant to be a kid even though he was practically an adult.

It turns out, though, that things didn't end up the way you plan them, so he spends this summer preparing for the end instead.  And it's better this way, despite everything, because this does not include saying good bye to Robb. 

(It makes everything worth it, not having to let him go.  Theon doesn't want to look at that too closely.)

It does, however, mean that he would be saying good bye to his dad for the last time.  And even though he knows its a bad idea, that it's only going to rip him apart and knock him onto his knees, Theon wants to make one last effort at mending things between them, even if none if it was his fault.

Theon never has gotten to be the selfish one, or the irresponsible one.  He's had to grow up way too fast, and part of that was taking responsibility for things that weren't his fault, so it doesn't surprise him when he finds himself standing in front of his porch, not quite willing to take another step towards the door.

The door opens right when he turns to leave.  Theon never made it towards knocking on the door, because he was a coward, and because he knew that Robb was waiting for him on the street, the engine idling for a quick get away.  nothing would happen to him when robb was there, but Theon has decided that this is not a conversation that he wants to have.  He still deserved the option of choosing.

And his father, like so many things, ruined it just by opening a door.

"Theon."  The voice, the one he hadn't heard in so many months, was even rougher than he remembered it, like his father hadn't spoken since the day that Theon first found himself out on the street.  "What are you doing here?"

He is not a coward.  Theon knows this.  He also knows that his father is the one who is most afraid, between the two of them.   "Came to say good bye."  He shrugs, shoves his hands deep into his pockets, purposefully avoids looking at him.  "I'm going to college in the fall."

This would be the moment, if they were any other father and son, his father would tell him good job.  He would say that he was proud of him, for overcoming all of this.  Theon can only take it as a good sign that he isn't being threatened with bodily harm.

"Anyways.  Just thought I should tell you,"  There is a lump rising in his throat and a heat prickling behind his eyes, and theon knows that it is time to go.  "I'll call you, sometimes.  Just to check in. Maybe send you some articles and shit, I've been getting things published."

He stands there for another long moment, wondering if his father would be strong enough to reach out and close the gap.  He doesn't, so Theon turns and cuts through the grass, back towards Robb, towards safety, towards home.  

His hand is on the handle when his father finally speaks.  "How's your mother?"  Hesitation.  A voice cracking.  Theon ignores it.  "I haven't been to see her in a while."

Theon knows that he hasn't.  He could tell from the visitor's log that he's been the only one to see her in ages.  "She's good."  He forces a smile onto his face, because he knows that this is as close to being okay as the two of them can come, and he is grateful for it.  Maybe they are not people who are meant to be okay with each other.  "We're all good, dad."

There's no response, just the slamming of the screen door and the sudden absence of light, leaving Theon standing out in the darkness.

 

2.

Time seems to speed up and slow down all at once, slipping and sliding, the days dripping off the calendar until he finds that the time is going by faster than he could have possibly imagined.  It leaves him sadder then he ever thought it would be, because he's found that at the end of it all, he does not want to say good bye to anyone.

"I think I'm going to miss it here."

He and Robb are stretched out across the grass in the park, watching Arya weave her way through the jungle gym.  Bran and Sansa are sitting over in the shade, and Rickon has claimed a spot on the tire swing, screaming over at Jon, Sam, and Gilly for one of them to come push him.  It is one of the famous Stark sibling outings, the kind that Robb had been overseeing for as long as Theon had known him.  They've become rarer as the years went on, but this summer they've gotten popular again.  

"Really?"  Robb flips over so he's closer to Theon, on his stomach.  He's got chocolate smeared on the side of his cheek from where Rickon jumped on him a few minutes ago, but Theon isn't about to tell him, just reaches out to take a bite of his own ice cream.  "After everything?"

Theon doesn't want to think about the everything.  He wants to think about summer nights out at the falls, of work breaks spent with Robb and the others in the chill of the frozen yogurt shop, about the late nights working on busted tires and oil changes to the sound of soft rock.  He wants to think about the ice cream shop with the best rocky road around, the one that always let you know when the baseball team one because they'll be out front climbing all over the picnic tables.  He wants to think about the Starks, and cooking complicated dinners with Asha that always burn, and the coffee shop where he still reads on open mic night even though Theon is sure he could find better offers.

The good stuff.  The small town stuff.  The stuff that made this place home, despite all the people that tried to turn it into something awful.

"It was a good place to grow up."   _A safe place.  A sheltered place.  The place where I met you, and I will never, no matter what else has happened or will happen, regret that._ "Can't get much better than this slice of paradise, can it?"

Robb looks at him for a long moment, and then he turns away, eyes traveling over the park.  At Rickon, who is surrounded by Sam and Jon and Gilly and looks in danger of flipping off the swing but is still screaming to be pushed higher.  At Arya, who has crowned herself queen of the jungle gym.  At Sansa, who no longer has any bruises, and his brother, who is going to start training for his first Special Olympics event.  And then back at Theon.

"I guess it hasn't," Robb says, and then reaches out to take Theon's hand.  And despite their agreement, Theon lets him.

 

 

3.

It's fourth of July.

Fourth of July, and they are back at the falls even though they told Catelyn and Ned that they would be going to the fireworks an hour away, where they would eat caramel covered apples and cotton candy, and would take turns throwing at the kid on the dunking booth, and would end up tucked in a tree as the fireworks split apart over their heads.

Instead, they stumbled through that same path that every kid in town has come to know about, and spent the night with the taste of beer and soggy chips going stale in their mouths, the rush of cold water and warm night air making them alternatively shiver and sweat as the night went on, five dozen boys and girls stripped down to their underwear and spending the night together, hoping they still might be able to see the fireworks through the trees.

Technically, Robb isn't supposed to be there. The summer after you graduate is supposed to be your last summer at the falls.  Theon isn't sure who decided that, but they all know that it is a rule, and even though normally no one would dare break it, no one has seemed to hold his presence against him.  

(Theon doesn't know why.  Maybe it's a  _his brothers are dead and his mom is crazy and don't even get started on the situation with his dad_ kind of thing.  Or maybe its a  _he's with Robb and Robb is cool so we don't question it_ kind of thing.  Or maybe it's just that they like him and haven't forgotten who gave them free beer or didn't mind when they threw up in his car that one time.)

(That happened once.  And he did mind.)

He loses Robb about twenty minutes in, because Robb is valedictorian and student council president and doesn't want to take part in things like a competition to see who can chug a beer the fastest.  And Theon gets that, but it does mean that in the initial drunken haze after he drinks three cans in a fifteen minute span he loses him and doesn't find him again until he feels a hand wrap around his wrist, yanking on his arm in a way that was playful but still knocked him down under the water.

Theon comes up sputtering, and on the other side of the waterfall, back inside the cave.  He's also only inches away from Robb, who seemed to remember the fiasco of the last time they were here together and realize his mistake all at once.

 _You shouldn't be here.  You should step away._ Theon was scrambling.  He was only just barely tall enough to touch the bottom, but Robb was fine, and reached out to help him stay up.  And Theon refused to do that, cling to him in the dark, so he goes to the wall instead, even if the rough surface of the rock scratches the pads of his fingers.   _Come on, Theon, smile, make a joke, do something._

He doesn't.  Robb tries instead, pointing down at the water.  "Glow sticks."  A pause, where they both examine the sticks floating around in the water, casting an eerie glow around them, like the relaxed version of a strobe light.  "Pretty."

Theon scoops one up in his hand.  Its pink, and still has the clip on at the end of it, so he fastens it around his wrist.  "Probably poisoning the fish."

"Probably."  Robb snorts out a  laugh and then goes quiet, watching the play of the colors over their skin.  "Do you remember the last time we were standing back here?  What we did?"

 _you honestly think I could forget?_ "Yes."  His voice was so soft, barely audible over the shouts coming from just around the corner of the water, but Theon can't make himself speak any louder.  

"Could we do it again?  Just one more time?"  Robb wades closer, and Theon's back is against the wall.  He's got no where to go, but this time, Theon doesn't run away.  "I have this awful feeling it might be our last chance."

Theon shouldn't let him.  He should tell him that's just the change screwing with him, that paranoia is natural when it comes to having the solid ground crumble under your feet and having to stand all on your own.  But he doesn't, just lets himself take the hand that Robb offers, and let's himself be selfish, just this one time.

 

4.

The going away party for Robb is a hit.

Sansa had planned it, one a weekend that Ned and Catelyn and Bran were all on an overnight visit to a doctor, which was pretty rebellious and awful when Theon stopped to think about it. She'd invited everyone, and now the house was full to the point of overfl0owing, complete with the three random pot addicts that always ended up puking in the bushes by the time the party is over.

Needless to say, Theon is impressed, and he told her so, which earned him one of her prettiest smiles and a kiss on the cheek, a much nicer result than when he told her she wasn't to drink anything that might have alcohol in it.

There's a voice in his ear and a hang tugging at his elbow, and when Theon stops laughing (he can't remember what was so funny) long enough to turn around, he sees the girl that he had danced the court dance with, back at homecoming.  "Hey."  He grins at her, trying to cover the fact that he doesn't know her name.  "How are you?"

"Avery."  She tells him her name with a smile of her own, and doesn't seem to be the least upset that he had forgotten it.  "I heard you're going off to college.  Finally getting out of here."

It wasn't really that simple, but Theon doesn't want to explain it, so he just says "yeah" and leaves it at that.  But she was still there, and she really was a nice girl, and he remembered her as being fun to hang around after she got over her initial panic at homecoming, so he decided to take another stab at conversation.  "And you?"  She -Avery- looks pleasantly surprised at being included.  "How's school?"

"Oh, you know."  She rubs at the carpet with the toe of her sock, which doesn't make sense, because Sansa had told everyone not to bother with shoes and he doesn't see how she could have lost them.  "I'm a junior now, so there's that."

"Officially an upperclassmen.  We can toast to that."  He raises his beer can to clink against her water bottle, and she laughs, the giggle high.  And even though he knew that before he might have seen the way she was acting as an invitation, right now she just reminds him of Sansa.  "Cheers."

She smiles up at him, shy and pretty, and he gets the feeling that he just gained an admirer he didn't particularly want.  

"Listen," she starts, and Theon cuts her off before she can start.

"I would love to,"  He says, because its always easiest like that, to start with the positive and then go to the excuse.  If he needs the excuse.  It's too loud and he's too hungry to realty figure out if this girl is coming on to him or not.  "Really.  But I can't.  We can't.  I'm graduated, remember?  It's illegal."

Theon thought for a moment that she was going to backtrack.  It would be his course of action, considering that she hadn't really said anything about the two of them getting together and he had really only been making assumptions.  But Avery apparently isn't the type of girl to lie, or be embarrassed.  "Oh well.  Knew it was a long shot anyways."

He's genuinely curious, but he shouldn't have been, considering that what he and Robb did behind the waterfall is the high school's worst kept secret.  "Why?"

"Because of him,"  She said, nodding over at Robb, who had just been dragged up onto the coffee table by Jon, thanks to Sam and Gilly demanding of a speech.  "No one's got a prayer, compared to that."

 _No,_ he thinks, when Robb calls him out as his partner in crime and a million hands seemed to reach out of no where to shove him forward, clutching to Robb's arm when he finally makes it up on the coffee table until he finally finds his balance.   _Not a one._

 

5.

"You'll call, won't you?"

Asha is at the Starks with him, seeing Theon and Robb off.  They've loaded all the bags, and Robb's parents are going to follow behind them up to the college to help the two boys get everything straightened out.  Asha can't come because of work.

"I won't.  I'll be busy partying."  Asha chokes out a laugh that sounds like it might turn into a sob at any moment, and Theon reaches out to tug at her braid, something he used to do a lot harder when he was a lot younger.  "Of course I'll call, Asha."

"Okay."  She hides her face in his shirt, and he realizes with a shock that somewhere along the line, he had gotten taller than her.  Theon supposed he must have known that, but she had always seemed big enough for the both of them, tough enough for him to hide behind when things got rough.  "I'll wait up.  If you need anything-,"

"I won't-,"

She catches his face in her hands and makes him look her in the eye.  The intensity of it, the knowledge that this is good bye, almost makes scared he's going to cry.  "But if you do."  Her eyes search his face.  "I'm here.  All you need to do is ask."

"The same to you."  Of all things, he didn't think that his sister would be the one that he would miss, but now he knows that he was wrong, that this will be the hardest thing to leave behind.  

She scoffs at him.  "I can take care of myself, little brother."

He smiles, because he knows she's right.  Behind him, the Starks have finished saying good-bye and were waiting for him to finish.  It was time to go.  

Theon hugs her one last time.  "I love you Asha."  He doesn't let go even when he should.  "Thanks for everything."

"Yeah, yeah."  She does not say it back.  Asha's never said it back, but she doesn't need to.  Theon already knows.  "Now get out of here, alright?  I want my apartment back."

Theon smiles, and then he leaves her behind and walks toward Robb, who has the door open and waiting.  He climbs in, slams it closed, wipes his eyes and buckles his seat belt.

"You ready?"  Robb's eyes are just as red as Theon's, his face just as tear-streaked.  

"Never."  Theon takes a shaky breath.  "But let's get this started."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can I get some comments please? Want to know what you thought about the asha seen


	18. Chapter 18

1.

College is... fun. 

There isn't really other word for it, because for once in Theon's life, he is not worrying about where his next meal will come from or how far he can stretch his paycheck  He does not worry about the drunk men that stumble through his house in the middle of the night or why Asha didn't come home on time, he does not worry about Sansa and her never ending love for Joffrey, he does not worry about the cars piling up at the garage or whether the coffee shop will have enough money to pay him for the open readings he sometimes does to draw in a crowd.

Here, life is simple.  Here, he has unlimited trips up to an endless buffet of food all hours of the day, and his doors have a lock that cannot be broken in.  Here, he has access to a laundry machine and the water is never shut off so he can shower whenever he wants, for however long he wants.  Here, he has friends who do not know that his father beats or that his brothers are dead or that he is the one with the crazy mother.  Here, he is only Theon, the boy who gets average grades and writes above average poems, who knows how to party but is never mean no matter how drunk he gets, who kisses girls and sometimes boys and no one has a problem with it.

Here, life is easy.  Here, he can relax.  He had not known how much of his life was being channeled into the simple act of survival, how he was always bracing himself for the impact of his father's fists or eating small portions in order to have something saved when he was starving, how every action is calculated, guarded.  Back home, every move he made, down to the smallest twitch of a finger, was like a move in a chess match that he was desperate to win.  Here, there is no one trying to knock him down.

Robb doesn't quite get it.  Things aren't as easy for him as they are for Theon.  He misses his brothers, and is constantly calling some girl called Margery to check in on Joffrey's whereabouts.  The phone calls home are quite often and last hours; Theon now knows that when Robb promises it will only take a moment, he is lying.  So its harder for him to, to make the change and say good-bye, fall into a routine.  

But for Theon?  It's the easiest thing in the world.

 

 

2.

Theon had been to his share of parties, but they were all nothing compared to the university's Halloween weekend.

"We cannot do this."  Robb was beside him, dressed up in what might have been his attempt as a sexy pirate.  He sort of looked adorable and desperate at the same time, and totally out of his depth.  "This is insane."  there's a beat where he stares wide eyed at the crowd merging around them, all the girls dressed up in costumes that don't hide anything, and Theon can tell he's having a horrified vision of Sansa two years down the road, where she's doing the exact same thing.  "This is  _illegal."_

"Yeah, I hear you."  Theon rolls his eyes, and then grabs him by the elbow, forcing him up the pathway to the frat house.  He had been told him about it by one the guys who were throwing the party, some trust fund kid that was in his advanced writing class.  It was supposed to be a good time, if you actually relaxed enough to have fun.  Theon doubted Robb would get there tonight.  "But this is what we're supposed to do."

What they're supposed to do at these things wasn't really clear to Theon, because college parties had different rules than small town parties, but he didn't feel like sharing that information with Robb.  So he doesn't, and when the two of them get pulled apart when a bunch of halfway drunk (but still sober enough) girls come begging them for a dance, Theon tries to tell himself that Robb will be fine.

And he is.  He's so fine that Theon doesn't tell him until hours later, when Robb pokes his head through the doorway of the master bedroom to find Theon sitting by the foot of the bed.  It wasn't really that impressive of a bedroom, but its the only one with its own bathroom, and that's why they were in here in the first place.  

Robb looks confused.  "What are you doing in here?"  

Theon sighed, and jerked his head towards the bathroom, where the girl inside seemed to go into a fresh round of gagging.  "She's getting sick."  He winced at the sound.  "Told her I would help."

"Why?"

Theon laughed, and then felt bad about it.  He didn't want to tell Robb that they had been just about to start kissing, and then she doubled over and puked on his shoes (he left that for someone to find later, Theon wasn't that good of a person) and started crying.  He was trying to calm her down, but then she just made like she was going to get sick again, so he just pulled her into the bathroom that he had found earlier.  As much as he wanted to, he couldn't find it in himself to leave her there, so he rummaged through the cabinets until he found a wash cloth for her to wipe her mouth off on and held her hair back until she finally (thankfully) waved him away.

"I was with her before it started."  Theon knew that Robb knew that meant they were making out, and he felt guilty about it, which was absurd, because its not like he owed Robb anything.  "Didn't feel right to just leave her.  God knows what would happen at a party like this."

It was Theon's idea to come here, but he's not naïve about what might happen to a drunk girl left all alone, where no one could see or hear anything that might be happening in an upstairs bathroom no one else knew was there.  He couldn't leave her alone.

"So you're missing the party of a lifetime to help some drunk girl?"  Robb pulled a pillow of the bed, a rare show of disrespect for other people's belongings, and then settled down beside him.  "Seems unfortunate."

"It is."  Theon didn't mind, really.  The music was loud and the beer was cheap, and he had never been a big fan of jello shots.  "A shame."

"A tragedy."  There's another loud sound of puking, and Robb frowns, looking like he might want to check on her.  "But its nice of you."

"It's the right thing to do."  Theon flexed his fingers and made a fist, uncomfortable as always at the compliment.  "I would want someone to do the same if it was Asha or Sansa."

He does not think twice before including Sansa's name, and maybe that is why Robb's face changes to something soft and decisive all at once.  "I love you."

Theon thinks about brushing it away.  About thinking that it is meant as friends or as brothers, a prelude to their  _now and always,_ but he knows that Robb would not be looking at him in the way he is if that is all it was.  If Theon had had a chance to picture it, he would not have expected his first I love you to be said like this, in the bedroom of a stranger while they listening to a girl throw up in the bathroom.

But they never were the romantic type.

Theon cleared his throat and tried to smile, then reached over to take Robb's hand, and wondered if they were ever going to make something out of this.  He already knew the answer.  They could love each other as much as they wanted, but neither of them would be willing to act on it.  

"I love you too,"  He says, and wonders if that will ever be enough.

 

 

3.

He and Robb aren't room mates.

It was Robb's idea, because Robb has this picture of what people are supposed to be like, and that includes meeting new people.  Theon hadn't ever wanted to meet anyone knew, and having to face a whole different person to room with had been terrifying.  It was still terrifying, trying to get to know each other.

Like now, when he (Darren) gets off the phone with his brother and lays back on the bed, one arm thrown over his eyes to block the sunlight streaming in through the window.  "God, I'm hungover.  The bastard wasn't even sorry."  The bastard in question was Darren's brother, who had taken both he and Theon to the bar the night before and kept ordering them drinks even though they weren't twenty-one.  There are all sorts of illegal things that go on in college.  "What about you?  You got a brother?"

"I had two."  Theon cleared his throat, uncomfortable, and wonders why the question felt like a punch to the stomach.  Most days, he doesn't even think of them.  And on the days he does, he thinks he might hate them, which makes him wonder what kind of person that makes him.  Generally speaking, he had decided it was best not to think about them at all.  "But they died."

"Jesus."  Darren sat up.  "What happened?"

"Car crash.  Drunk driving."  Then, realizing that Darren is predisposed to think the best of people, he amends the statement.  "They were the drunk ones."

"Shit, man, had no idea."  Darren stares at him for a moment, and they both jump when his text alert chimes through the room.  "There's a party at Joe's tonight.  Should I tell him you're in?"

Theon blinks at the change of subject.  "Fuck yeah."  He gets up and rummages in his closet for a clean shirt.  "We need to bring anything?"

It was a habit that Catelyn had instilled in him, but it was sort of out of place here.  "Nah."  Darren was already at the door.  "That sucks about your brothers though."

"Yeah."  Theon let him be the one to lock the door.  If he tries, sometimes he can pretend that this is what his life was always like, with people assuming the best of him.  "Tell me about."

Maybe new people weren't such a bad thing, after all.

 

 

4.

He calls his father.

He does not pick up.

 

 

5.

They've got their backs to the washing machine, quizzing each other for the exam they have the next day.  Robb is asking them rapid fire and Theon is struggling to catch up, not because he doesn't know it, but because he is so tired and the sounds around him have come together to be sort of soothing, like a wash of white noise, and the rhythm of the machine was lulling him to sleep.

"Hey."  Robb pulled the book away from his face and snapped his fingers.  "You with me?"

Theon grinned and rubbed at his eyes.  It had seemed such a good idea to do their laundry when it was empty, even if that meant coming down here at twelve o'clock, but in practice, it just made him tired.  "Yeah."  And even though it wasn't really called for, he added, "Now and always, remember?"

Robb grinned, and then reached over to tap the inside of Theon's wrist, where he had gotten the words tattooed on with miniscule font.  Robb has a matching one.  "Now and always."  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the dull chapter, but I had to have a filler to ease them into college life before I came in with the action. Next chapter will be better, I swear


	19. Chapter 19

1.

Robb goes home for Thanksgiving.

Theon doesn't.

He's not sure why, because he knows, that when it comes time to spend Thanksgiving Day alone and tucked in the corner of some diner, he'll be sad and lonely and wishing that he was with Robb.  He wanted to see Asha, to tell her how things are better than he could have hoped and promise her that everything was going to be fine.  He wanted to go to the Stark's house and have Catelyn hug him like he really was her child, feel the warmth of Ned Starks approval.

Theon wants a lot of things.  He wants to be able to go home and hug Sansa, make her understand how strong she is and make it so she's so confident in her own power she never goes crawling back to a boy like Joffrey instead.  He wants to take Bran to the new superhero movie that came out, to get Arya's thoughts on the best female superhero for a paper he was writing, and help Robb teach Bran to throw a baseball, because Theon is better in sports than Robb ever would be.

He wants to go back to the garage and say thank you to all of them, tell them he never would have made it out of this tiny town without them.  He wants to sit in front of his brothers graves and finally talk to them, to say  _fuck you, I hate you but I loved you, why'd you dumbasses have to screw everything up by dying_ and start to move on.  He wants to sit with his mother and have him know who he is, and be able to walk through the front door of his childhood home without his father calling the police.

But you don't always get what you want, he knows, so he would rather stay here a little longer, because for the first time, he feels like he is right, like he is good, that he belongs somewhere.  He does not want that feeling to end just because of a stupid holiday, no matter how wounded Asha had sounded on the phone or how many times Robb said that he would miss them.  It just wasn't worth it.  

Right now, Theon was at the top of the world.  He knew he would stumble sometime, but he likes to think he can avoid it as much as possible.

"You're sure you don't want to come home?"  Theon had walked Robb all the way to the bus stop, holding an umbrella over the top of their heads.  Robb was shouting over the rain, the collar of his coat flipped up to keep the chill of the wind away.  

He looks annoyingly beautiful.

"I'm staying here."  They are only a few feet away, but it felt like miles, this short space, because it showed what split them apart: Robb had things to anchor him.  Theon would always just be a flight risk.  

"I don't want to leave you alone."  There was a damp ticket clutched in his fist, but Robb was still prepared to walk away.  Theon knew that he would offer to stay, and suddenly he had a vision of him sitting at that diner, but this time he was across from Robb and he wasn't lonely anymore.

Theon shakes his head and takes a step back.  "I'll be fine.  You've got people waiting."  The bus pulled up with a screech of the brakes, and a surly looking bus driver glared down at him.  "Go, Robb."

Robb smiled, soft and sad and understanding.  Theon couldn't stand it.

"I'll be here when you get back."  The rain was coming down hard enough that he had to shout to be heard, and he just wanted to get inside.  "Go home, Robb."

He went.

 

 

2.

Four days later, he does find himself sitting in a diner all by himself, working his way through his third cup of coffee ( _black, no creamer, because it was cheap and bitter and he felt like being a masochist tonight_ ) and staring down at the cold plate of fries in front of him.

He was writing poems.  It comes easier, when he's sitting in a new place and the wall of noise is thrown up around him.  New things to see, to hear, to feel, more people to look at and imagine what their lives are like.  Theon's almost out of room in his notebook.

Theon wants to hide in here forever, because if he doesn't, then he has to go back to the dorms and look at the all the other miserable and hateful people who couldn't make it home for Thanksgiving.  They don't seem to want to talk about why they don't have a place to go back to, but they have seemed to come together as a support system, a friendship born from the knowledge that all of them have their troubles that the kids who left will never understand.

(They had a pizza party last night, and a Disney movie night the one before, put on by one of the girls in the freshman dorms.  He's not really sure they were allowed to be there.)

He's also avoiding Asha, but he can't, because it is eight o'clock on Thanksgiving and its the kind of day she always hated, cold with wind that bites and he knows that she can't cook worth a damn without him, so she must have went and got Arby's, which she considers to be the closest thing to a homemade meal that fast food can offer.  Theon's trying to stop making excuses and start making an effort, so when he finally drank the rest of his coffee, he gathered up his courage and called.

"Theon."  She picked up on the first ring, excited to hear from him and trying not to show it.  "How are you?"

"I'm good."  He hated himself, suddenly, because he realized that he wanted to be home, never mind that it was perfect.  He was never going to rinse away what happened in his past just by hiding from it.  He just has to learn to deal with it.   "You?"

"I'm fine.  I can take care of myself.  You, on the other hand,"  There was a happy lilt to her voice, and she was teasing him.  "You are okay, aren't you?  Nothing I need to worry about."

"I'm fine.  Really."  He was choking up, listening to her, picturing her curled up on that ratty old couch they picked up from a street corner on trash day, already ready for bed, condemned to a day of staring at the television because she had no where to go and no family to run to.  When he talks, the guilt makes his voice break in two.  "I should have come home.  I shouldn't have left you alone."

"Theon."  She never did have much patience for tears, or whining, even when he was little.  He imagined she had even less patience for regret.  Asha wasn't the type of person to cry over spilled milk.  "I told you before that you don't worry about me.  I worry about you.  It's how this works."

"But you needed me."  She did.  He didn't think about that part of it when he made his decision, about how no matter how good he would feel not being reminded of all the shit he had to fight against, she would still be left alone.  And despite all her talk, Asha doesn't handle being alone very well.  "And I was too much of a bastard to come home."

"You're always a bastard.  And an asshole."  He could hear explosions in the background.  A Marvel marathon, it seems.  "That's never bothered me before.  If staying there, giving yourself a bit longer to figure things out was what you needed, then so be it."

He doesn't have a response, because he was wrong, so wrong, and he wanted to be home with her, he wanted Robb, he wanted anything other than to be stuck in the corner of this diner eating food he didn't like just because it was cheap.  

"But you better come home for Christmas."  She said, and she sounded like she meant it.  

He wanted to say sorry, but he didn't think she would like that, either.  "I love you."

They don't say that to each other.  He supposes they know it, how much they care about each other, but the two of them were raised in a house where you kept your mouth shut just to make it through the day.  It was only until he met the Starks that he realized how strange that was.  "I love you too, little brother."  Her voice was soft.  "Take care of yourself, alright?"

The phone call was over.  They don't really know how to talk to each other, still.  "I thought that's what I had you for."

She laughs, and then makes a sound that might have been a sob hitching in her throat.  Theon can hear her start to really cry before she hangs up the phone without saying good bye.

He's caught up in the conversation, in the guilt, that he didn't notice the waitress until she taps her nails on the menu.  "You've been here for three hours now."  She's got blue hair, the shade that comes from cotton candy, and gaudy turkey earrings dangling from her ears.  Theon must have stared too long, because she snaps her gum at him.  "Either order something else or get out."

Theon pulls out a wad of crumpled ones and handed it to her, not sure how much he was giving her but knowing it was enough to cover it.  He probably way overtipped her, but that was okay.  He wasn't going to hide from his life any longer.

 

 

3.

The day before break was supposed to end, Theon made a lot of rules for himself.  About not being bitter, about not blaming people, about moving forward.  About taking better care of the people he loved, about working hard for what he wants, about his feelings for Robb and the fact that it was time to either do something about it or let it go.

And then Robb comes back and he realizes that it was all total bullshit.

"See?"  Theon didn't know what to focus on; the fact that Robb was wearing a black button up shirt and trying to tackle his hair with a comb and gel, or the face staring up from the phone screen that was being shoved at him.  Apparently, it was date night.  "I told you he was cute."

Of course he was cute.  Every guy that seemed to look Robb's way was cute, all of them more so than Theon.  Especially this guy, who looked like some sort of model.

"He is."  There's no point in lying.  And he wouldn't have, anyways, because Theon has not gotten so desperate that he would sabatoge Robb's relationship just to keep him all to himself.  "How'd you guys meet again?"

He already knew how they met.  Every word of it was burned into his head with the sort of clarity that meant he was never going to be able to let it go, but since Robb only told him the story once, he thinks its reasonable that he should be able to have gotten confused on some details.  It would give him time to clear his head and maybe shake some of the panic off.

Turns out, he should have gone home for Thanksgiving, because as soon as those bus doors closed, Robb sat down next to the cutest guy he'd ever seen.  And even though he was shy, even though he wasn't even sure he was gay, he decided to take a chance and talk to him.  Talk, and talk, and talk, for a full hour until the other guy ( _Podrick, what a stupid fucking name_ ) had to get off, at which point they exchanged numbers and snapchats and made plans to go for coffee.

Tonight, would be their first official date, where they sat down and decided whether this was going to work or not.  Theon was spending the night in Robb's dorm, so they could talk about it afterward.  He didn't know what he did to deserve it.

Robb was only halfway through the tale of their first meeting when there was a knock at the door.  Theon was almost relieved, until he swung open the door to find himself face to face with this Podrick guy, who had actually brought him flowers.

"Oh."  He looks surprised for a moment, and then he smiles, relaxed and easy going, which made Theon want to punch him.  He just knew, somehow, that he was going to like this guy.  Theon wished for once that Robb would date a jerk.  "Sorry.  Must have the wrong room."  He leans back out into the hallway to check the number.  "I'm supposed to be here for Robb.  Do you know where?"

It takes a lot of nerve, Theon admits, to walk through a college dorm with an armful of flowers when its clear that you're there to pick up a guy.   _But,_ he thinks, looking at Robb's face and hearing the fumbled thank you, _it was a good move._

The date would go well.  He's resigned himself over to it in the short time it takes for introductions to be made and he sees them the short way to the door.  "Have fun."  His voice sounds off even to himself, but Robb doesn't notice.  "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

They laugh, but they are too busy looking at each other to say good bye.  Theon closes the door, locks it, and then slumps to the floor.

Who would have thought that he would miss Jeyne?

 

4.

Robb does not come back that night.

 

 

5.

Robb and Podrick are on a date ( _their fourth already, this time to watch some play that Podrick's history professor is running_ ) and Theon is sitting in a bar that he knew didn't check IDs, working his way through a bottle of cheap beer.  He doesn't like the taste ( _never has, if he's being honest_ ) and its so cold that it hurts his teeth, but he's still hoping that when he's done, things will start to feel better.

Because he's in love with Robb, probably has been since he was that older kid who got stuck with the snotty nosed younger kids just because he couldn't read, and Robb knows it, probably loves him too, but he doesn't seem to care, just keeps going on and finding people he thinks will be a better match, ones smarter and softer and kinder who aren't as quick to break as Theon is.

Theon wants to be one of those people.  He wants it so much that he can actually feel it in his stomach, like someone had stuck their hands in up to the elbow and rearranged things so they would always ache.  He can't take it anymore, hasn't been able to stand it since he waited up all night for Robb even though Theon  _knew_ he would not be coming home, sitting in his empty dorm room, sleeping in Robb's bed that still smells like him and thinking of what Robb and Podrick must be doing.

He hates it, this feeling, these thoughts, and he hates this beer and hates the fact that he's just like his father, going to a bar when he needs to feel better.  That makes his stomach turn even more than the thought of not having Robb did, so he throws a few dollars down and stumbles outside, into the winter air that stings his cheeks and brings tears to his eyes.

Theon is upset, and he wants to call someone, but the person he normally calls is Robb, so he calls Asha instead.  This time, it takes her six rings to pick up, and her voice is confused.  "Theon?"

"Robb's got a boyfriend."  He swears, kicks at the wall, and then tells her everything, about Stupid Podrick and his stupid fucking name, how they met and how if he had been there it wouldn't have happened, how he is better than Theon, how much Theon loves Robb and how he doesn't love him back.

"I love him."  He says, and his nose is running and tears are dripping hot down his face, falling onto cracked lips.  "I've loved him for so long."

"Theon."  Her voice is calm and it pulls him back.  "Are you listening to me, Theon?"

"Yes."  

"This year is about moving forward.  About letting go of all the bad things.  And maybe this thing you've got for Robb, maybe that's a bad thing, or something that was necessary when you were that little kid writing stories that you never thought anyone was going to read."  She was calm, and confident, and right, and Theon knew that he could trust her.  It was a different kind of trust than he has in Robb, one born from the solid ground of the safety of family rather than the leaping rush of faith.  "But you're grown up now.   And people are listening, and there is a whole world of boys waiting for you."

"What are you saying?"

"That its time to move on.  Not from all of him, not entirely."  She was sad for him, and he remembered the two of them sitting at a kitchen table so long ago, her saying that he needs to give it up.  It turns out she was right.  "Just enough to let go."

Theon listens, and he agrees.  He says good bye, and thanks her, and tells her he loves her.  And then he turns around, intending to walk away from the bar and the alcohol inside it, but instead he walks into a person with strong arms and a smiling face.

They catch him before he can falls, and they stand like that for a moment, their faces illuminated by the neon light pouring off the bar's windows.  The guy's hair is curly and the light makes a fuzzy halo around his face.  For a moment, brought on by the confusion of the conversation with his sister and the suddenness which he had been right, he knows that he has seen him before, and mistakenly thinks it is Robb come back to him.

"Hey."  Theon slips into the skin of someone else, someone more confident, someone who had not spent all night sitting in a bar trying to forget, because he no longer is thinking about Robb.  Instead, he is thinking of another boy, one that walked into his life for one night only and led him by the hand out into the back alley, who shoved him back against the wall so the bricks dug into his skin like he knew that Theon would like it, who whispered promises they both knew he was never going to keep him.  "You remember me?"

It would have been awful if he had said no.  If that moment, which had defined every day of Theon's life since, hadn't mattered to him at all.  But this boy just smiles at him, and Theon knew that he remember.  "How could I forget?"  They're walking back towards the bar, and he is holding the door for him.  "It's been a long time, Theon."

Theon laughed. _Ramsay,_ he remembers, the name flickering in his mind and disappearing just as fast, one of those things you had thought you forgot but really just tucked away.   _You have no idea._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before any of you ask, I'm still trying to stick with the theme of keeping all of these GOT characters, and I couldn't think of any other guy in Robb's age group to stick him with. So we have Podrick.
> 
> And of course, we also have Ramsay. Stay tuned for the drama.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've totally lost track of what age I made everyone, so just roll with it

1.

For the first time in his life, Theon is really, truly happy.

He doesn't want to say that it's because of Ramsay, because its not, even though they've been talking almost nonstop since they bumped into each other outside that bar.  They'd spent all night catching up, and Theon had thought that might have been it, but then Ramsay kissed him and didn't seem to have any intention of stopping.  He paid their tab, and met him for breakfast the next morning even when Theon half expected to be stood up, and never asks questions about Theon's home life when it was clear that he didn't want to talk about it.  That stuff was great, and it certainly didn't hurt things, but that wasn't why he was happy.

Theon was happy because for the first time he can remember, looking at Robb didn't hurt.  Watching him smile at Podrick ( _call me Pod, everyone does_ ) doesn't make that invisible hand in his stomach yank at his insides.  Helping him decide which shirt to wear for his date didn't make him jealous, just makes him want to swap stories of where Theon had taken him last night.  Seeing Pod, hanging out with him while they both wait for Theon, doesn't come with the guilt that he had back when he was friends with Jeyne.

This time, things were okay.

This time, he felt like he was finally moving on.

 

 

2.

There was a present in his hands.  It's wrapped up in brown paper, because Ramsay had used the paper bags from the grocery store down the street to cover it, and there's a doodled on pattern of octopus's, their tentacles swirling across the cover.

( _He had only mentioned Octopus one time, saying how when he was little, his mother had taken him to the aquarium and he spent all day in front of their tank, and they have been his favorite animal ever since.  It was the only time Theon had talked about his mother.)_

"My roommate drew them."  Ramsay was leaning over the back of the bench to watch over Theon's shoulder.  He had come up behind him at the bus stop and dropped it down into his lap.  Theon hadn't even known he was coming to send him off, let alone that he would bring him a present.  They've only been together for two weeks, and even then it wasn't really official.  "I couldn't get the leg things right."

"Tentacles."  Theon supplied the word without thinking, his mind still scrambling to catch up.  He was grateful for the gift, but he was also a bit humiliated, because he hadn't even thought of getting a gift for him.  He was panicked, trying to find the right thing to say and decided to just go for the truth.  "It's perfect.  Thank you.  But I didn't get you anything."

"I didn't think you would.  I didn't even plan on getting you a present, I just saw it, and,"  He shrugged, not meeting Theon's eyes.  "I thought of you."  He's kicking at the ground.  "You might not even like it."

"Of course I'll like it."  He was clutching it to his chest, and he felt like such a girl, because he was so happy over something that might be actually awful.  Might be a joke, even, something that Ramsay would go back and laugh about with his friends and Theon would never hear from him again.  "I'm going to love it."

"Don't open it now."  Ramsay closed his hands over Theon's, stopping them from picking at the paper.  "I want you to wait."

 _I want you to._ Later, Theon would become familiar with that sentence and know that it means nothing good, but at the time he thought it was sweet.  That Ramsay told him that because he was shy and worried Theon wouldn't want his gift, not because he liked to be the one in control, all the time, over everything.

"When do you want me to open it?"  They were in the stage of their relationship where they were too happy, too touchy, pressed up against each other in the middle of strangers, right in front of the bus stop.  

"Christmas Eve.  Midnight.  Call me as soon as you do."  He pulls Theon in for a kiss, hard, unforgiving, possessive, more of a claim than a comfort.  It's only when they break apart  and Theon sees Robb staring at him that he starts to get flustered, wondering when he became the sort of person that was okay with making out in the middle of the sidewalk.  "I'll be waiting."

Theon could see Robb raising an eyebrow behind Ramsay's back, and knows that he'll hear about it the whole bus ride home.  Robb isn't too sure of what he thinks of Ramsay yet, but he'll see how great he is soon enough.  "I will."  He pushes him away, gently.  "I promise."

 

 

 

3.

Asha is waiting for him at the bus stop.

The Starks are there, too, but for once Theon looks right past them and walks to his sister.  She barrels into him, hugging him so hard that it actually knocks the wind out of him, but he is grateful for it, and holds on even tighter.  She always has been something solid to hang onto, tougher than anyone else he had ever met.  

"You're home."  She was crying, ugly sobbing the way she always does.  

"I thought you didn't miss me."  He was teasing her, and maybe that wasn't kind, but they weren't the sort of siblings who handled sentiment very well.  Teasing was safer.

"Shut up."  Asha punched him in the shoulder hard enough to bruise.  "Of course I missed you."

He wants to tell her that he missed her, too, that he loved her, that he was finally happy and maybe at peace, but they were interrupted by Arya, who hurtled in between the two of them and threw herself at Theon's shins.  If he didn't know better, he would have thought he was being attacked.  

When he looks up, Asha is smiling.  She's also linked hands with some blonde girl that Theon vaguely identifies as the bartender from the pub in town, and that's embarrassing, that his sister's girlfriend might have had to find him a ride home in the past.  Or maybe it's sweet.  He can't tell.

"Go on."  Asha looks happy, too.  Maybe the Greyjoys are going to be okay after all.  "I'll be here."

 

 

4. 

He spends Christmas Eve with the Starks, because Asha is meeting Clara's parents for the first time and she didn't want him to be at home all alone.  Apparently things between the two of them were pretty serious.

The dinner is safe and happy and filled with good food that Catelyn heaped on Theon's plate a mile high, because she insisted that he had gotten thinner during his stay at college.  He's sitting beside Arya, who was peppering him with questions about the new superhero movie that he promised to take her to, and Bran, who looked more of an adult than a kid now, even though he's only fourteen.  

When its over, they separate.  Robb ducks out the back door to call Podrick, who was at his own family dinner a hundred miles away.  Theon can still see his shadow moving back and forth on the ground, and he watches it, wondering what they could be talking about.  

Jon sees him. Jon's paid extra attention to the nuisances between Theon and Robb for a while, now.  It's sort of endearing but mostly annoying.  "Heard he's got a new boyfriend."

"You heard right."  There's still a twinge of disappointment when he said it.  "Podrick."

"What kind of a fucking name is that?"  Jon joins him at the table and stares out at Robb.  "He always did have bad taste."

Theon tries not to flinch at that, because really, they both know that the people he like tend out to be perfect, except for the fact that they aren't Theon.  "He's actually really nice."  Impeccably polite, actually.  "He buys him dinner.  Brings him flowers."

"Tells him he's pretty?"  Jon's making fun of someone, but Theon can't tell if its him or Podrick.  Maybe Robb.  "I'm sorry, man."

"Don't be."  For once, he can say that and mean it.  "I'm dating someone, too."  It sounds like a lie, so he offers up a picture on his phone of the two of them at some tea shop Ramsay had taken him to just because he had never actually had tea before, and wanted to do it right.  "His names Ramsay."

Jon nodded.  "Nice."  He doesn't seem to know what to make of that, and theon can't read the expression on his face.  But then he doesn't have to at all, because Jon changes the subject.  "Did you hear that Sansa slapped Joffrey?"

"What?  No."  He doesn't quite believe it, but Sansa heard them talking about her from across the room and smiles, just a little.  She looks more grown up, like she had grown into her own skin.  Like she didn't need Theon or Jon or Robb to hide behind.  "Tell me everything."

(It's a fucking golden story, when the battered finally fight back.)

 

 

5.

 It's almost midnight when he goes home, so he races up to his room and locks it.  There's no point, when he knows that Asha wouldn't be home and that she wasn't the type to bust in uninvited, but old habits die hard.

Theon didn't realize how much that stupid present mattered to him until he was unwrapping it one strip at a time, trying to save as much of the picture as he could.  Inside, there was a moleskin journal, a thick one with three hundred pages.  The inside cover had a note from Ramsay.

 _It's a big notebook, but you told me once that seemed like you were filled to the brim with stories._ Theon can almost hear his voice reading along with it.   _Maybe its time to get them out._

He's scrambling for his phone almost as soon as he finishes reading, and his hands are shaking when he presses Ramsay's number, praying for him to pick up.  

"Theon."  He sounds happy, and not at all surprised, like there was no doubt in Ramsay's mind that Theon would follow orders.  "You opened it?"

"I did.  I loved it."  He is afraid of how he is sounding, of what he might say, but it really is unfair, because Ramsay had no idea how important it was to him that someone would be willing to give him a gift.  Maybe Theon never would get used to people treating him the way they were supposed to.  "It's the most perfect thing."

"Good.  I'm glad."  There's a smile in his voice.  "You had a good Christmas?"

"Yes.  You're not going to believe it-,"  Theon finds himself rattling on, about his sister and her girlfriend, about Arya and the superhero movie, about Sansa and how she slapped Joffrey.  About how everyone thought Podrick's name was stupid and he feels bad because he's a nice guy, about how the fried food at the pub was better than he could remember it ever being, about how the guys at the garage were happy to give up a few cars to him so they could spend more time with their families.  

When he finishes, there is only silence.  He panics for a moment, thinking he had done something wrong.  "What?"   He sounded deranged, probably, talking this much when Ramsay didn't want anything to do with him.  "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."  He didn't sound angry, or bored.  He sounded like Ramsay.  "I just really like you."

Theon smiled, and pressed a hand down over his mouth, because he didn't think he'd be able to keep from laughing.  "That's good, Ramsay."  Normally, he would have been worried about giving away too much too soon, but he had promised himself that he was going to try to be happy, and taking the leap was part of that.  "Because I really like you, too."


	21. Chapter 21

1.

The dating thing is going good.

Theon hadn't expected it to be this easy.  Other than Robb, he'd never been with a guy that he actually liked.   Before he met Ramsay, he would have thought that he would be watching his step every time they were together and even when they weren't, trying not to cross an invisible line in the sand, working through all this social etiquette that no one back home had never taught him.  It's stupid to be caught up in things like social cues, but right in the beginning of their relationship, its all Theon can think about. 

Like, with a girl, all the rules are already spelled out for you.  You know that you're the one who holds the door and offers up your jacket, and that at the end of the day you're expected to pick up the bill even if you secretly hope she's going to suggest that you split it.  You know that you get her jewelry for her birthday and flowers for Valentine's day, and that when you see her friends and parents out in public you're going to get dragged over for introductions.  You're able to know all of this, because from the time you were little, everyone was pumping you full of ideas of what role you were going to fill and how you were supposed to act.

That all goes up in smoke when its with a guy and a guy.  Theon is actually worried about if he should hold the door, because he doesn't want to look like he doesn't think Ramsay can hold the door for himself, but he also doesn't want to be rude.  He doesn't know the protocol for the end of the date, if he's supposed to pick up the bill or let Ramsay do it, or suggest that they split every time.  And none of this takes into consideration what happens when the date is over, when Theon is forced to make a choice between going back home or going home with Ramsay like he was clearly waiting for.

And he wants to do that.  He does, but he'd rather go back to his dorm, where they're in constant danger of being walked in on at any moment.  If they go back to Ramsay's apartment, they are alone and there will be no ready made excuse for why Theon doesn't want to actually do anything that a teenage boy would be expected to readily  _want_ to do, and he doesn't want to have to sit there and explain that even if he's been into guys for a while now, he's never really done all that much with them.

 _That night with you in the alley was as crazy as I got,_ he would have to say, which wouldn't even be the truth because of everything that went down with Robb, but there was no way in hell that Theon was bringing that up.  He didn't know much, but he knew that saying he used to fool around with his current best friend might create some tension.   _I don't really know how to do this._

He doesn't want to be a baby about all of it.  But it was their first official date, and Theon was tense through all of it, hesitating before every action and choosing his words carefully, and now they were out on the sidewalk, and here was the time for Theon to make a choice, to either grow up or stay the same scared little kid he always is.  He doesn't want that, because then maybe Ramsay would realize that Theon wasn't up for this and he would be better off walking away from him now.   _But if that were the case,_ Theon thought miserably, watching Ramsay say hello to some guy he had taken a class with last year,  _isn't it better that you find out now?_

"Hey."  Ramsay was adorable, and not afraid to be clingy.  He latched onto Theon's hand without thinking about it, acting like he had no intention of letting go.  "You want to come back to my place?"

 _And do what?_ But Theon knew what, he had even wanted this, had a whole talk with Robb about it two days ago, about all the things that he never thought to worry about before.  He had thought Robb would make fun of him, but he didn't, just sat on the bed all serious and told him everything he wished he had known.  And later, Podrick had even given him a few extra pointers, too.  "I...."  He didn't, because that comes with a whole new set of worries and he was having doubts as it is.  "I don't want..."

"Don't want to stay out tonight?"  Ramsay raised an eyebrow, and then they were already walking.  "That's fine.  I'm walking you home though."

He was protective, and sweet, and cared about Theon more than any other boyfriend or girlfriend had.  Theon would have to fess up eventually, and its better that he does it now before he lets his little worry turn into a big problem between them.  He has a tendency to do that.

He just wished they weren't standing in the middle of the street when he decides to start talking.

"It's not that I don't want to go to your apartment."  He said, the words coming out in one big rush.  "It's just that I don't want to do anything else.  Anything new."  And then, even though he probably didn't need to clarify, he added,  "I don't want to have sex."

Ramsay snorted, then looked over at Theon and saw how nervous he was and immediately stopped walking, pulling them both over to the grass where no one would hear them.  "Hey."  Theon didn't want to look at him, but Ramsay made him, and Theon was glad at he did.  It was better, to look into his eyes and see how much he needs it.  "This is whatever you want.  Only what you want, and not an inch farther, alright?"  Theon nodded, feeling stupid, feeling like he shouldn't be this worried about something that so many people just did without any thought or feeling behind it.  "We can put that off the table, okay?"

Theon swallowed hard, feeling his eyes sting, but he told himself it was just because of the cold.  "Okay."  He shook his head a few times, like he was forcing the idea to stick.  "You could still show me the apartment though."

Ramsay laughed, and then they were moving again, down the street in the direction of his apartment, like it really was just that easy to put the whole thing behind them.

 

 

2.

Robb tries to stay supportive during the whole thing, but Theon had the feeling that he was being stretched a little too thin, trying to balance school and work and Podrick and still caring about everyone back home.  It wasn't the best time for Theon to go and get a boyfriend that Robb didn't entirely trust, so he wasn't entirely surprised when Robb cornered him after one of their double dates and demanded to know what, exactly, he was thinking.

"I mean, you could have any guy you wanted."  Robb said, and Theon would have thought that he was whining, except for the fact that this reminded him so strongly of when Robb would complain about Sansa and Joffrey.  The association makes him pause for a moment, tells him that he should listen, because Robb hadn't been wrong about that one.  "Why pick this one?"

 _But he's wrong about Ramsay._ Theon thought fiercely.  He had been happy tonight, crammed between Robb and the side of the booth, his knee pressed up against Ramsay underneath the table, Podrick regaling them all of some story from his nursing class, where a guy who was afraid of needles fainted when he drew fake blood out of an orange.  There was no guilt or nerves anymore, just the thought the idea of being so overcome with the feeling of being cared for that Theon couldn't stand it.   _Ramsay is good, and he likes me, and he never flinches away from my sharp edges.  I wasn't good enough for you, but I'm good enough for him, and right now that's all I need._

He felt guilty for even considering to listen to it, to think that Ramsay might hurt him.  

"Why not pick this one?"  Theon set his books down with a bang, harder than he had intended.  "He's good to me."

"He pays for your meals and calls you pretty, I know, but no offensive Theon, but you don't have best examples to look back on for how a man should treat his boyfriend."  Robb was steamrolling on, talking over Theon's protests, and the words did sting, no matter how many times Robb said sorry while spewing them out.  "He's possessive, and never lets you talk for yourself, and he looks at you like he's something you own, Theon, from what you say he decides everything-,"

"He doesn't make me do anything I don't want to do!"

"And I'm worried about, you, really, because the Theon from back home would never let anyone shove them around!"

"The Theon from back home?"  Theon said, standing, ready to leave, because did it ever occur to Robb that the Theon back home wasn't the person that he wanted to be anymore?  That maybe he wanted to leave that person behind, to grow into his skin and become something better?  "That boy isn't here anymore. He's dead.  He was dying long before I met Theon.  And what the hell do you mean I don't have any good examples?"  Theon said, breathing heavy, eyes stinging, choking for air, because even the thought of becoming someone like his mother wasn't something he could take.  "I grew up with you, in your house, watching your parents.  You  think anyone could look at them and not understand how a man should treat the people he loves?  And I've watched you."

Then, thinking it would be unfair, he added,  "Asha isn't bad either."

Robb sighed, long and heavy, the way he used to when Theon would get too drunk and he would have to help drag him home.  "I just don't think you know what you're doing."

"Well, I do."  Theon said, ever stubborn, even though a part of him was screaming out that he was being stubborn, that this was stupid, this was  _Robb, he wouldn't be saying this if he didn't have a reason, maybe you should pay attention you stupid fuck_.  The other part of him didn't want to give this feeling up, where he's right and the world is working with him for once, not against him.  "And I don't need to ask your permission to do anything, Robb, so maybe you should just learn to live with it."

 

 

3.

Theon leaves, and Robb doesn't follow, and they don't talk to each other the entire weekend.

He spends it with Ramsay, instead, hiding out from the world in his apartment, watching bad tv and reading the things that Theon had gotten published, stories so old he cringes at them now, and then curling up in bed to  _just sleep, nothing more, I promise.  We can even put pillows between us if it makes you feel better_ and Theon rolling his eyes and telling him  _don't be stupid, get over here already._

"I'm right about him,"  He whispers to himself, hiding behind the locked bathroom door, listening to Ramsay moving around pots and pans as he cooked them breakfast, singing along to the song on his record player as he did so.  Theon was supposed to be helping.  "I have to be right."

 

 

 

4.

He calls his father Tuesday morning, just like he always does.

Theon expects it to go to voicemail.  That's how these things went- Theon would listen to the first few rings feeling equal parts hopeful and scared, and then he got resigned to the fact that his dad was never really going to want to talk to him, and then by the time he goes to leave a message he's mostly relieved.  He only talks for a moment or so, about school and Robb and sometimes to talk about Mom or Asha, but then he hangs up.  

He's stopped even expecting him to pick up.  When he calls, it's not ever in an ideal place to hold a conversation anymore, which is why he's so surprised when he's standing in the middle of a Starbucks line and his dad actually answers.

"Dad?"  It's too loud, and Theon waves an apology at the woman waiting for his order and steps out of line.  "Shit, hang on, I-,"  He steps out into the cold air and shrugs at Robb, who is looking perturbed at his lack of coffee.  (they had made up over the whole Ramsay thing, with both of them agreeing to wait it out and see which one of them was right.)  "What's up?"

"You called me."  He sounded awkward and embarrassed, like he had no idea how to hold a conversation over the phone.  "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

"You never pick up,"  Theon said, sulky in spite of himself.  "I call you, and you never pick up."

"If you're just going to yell at me every time I do, maybe I shouldn't."  They're both angry at each other, all the time.  This is why they never talk.  "Can't a man just see how his son is doing?"

"The son's still gay, if that's what you were wondering."  Robb was paying attention now, and class started in five minutes and they were fifteen minutes away, which meant that they really should be going.  "Listen, dad, I got to go, but I'll call you later."

"Oh."  A pause, a sound that was him taking a long drink from his ever present beer.  Or maybe its something perfectly acceptable to drink at nine o'clock in the morning, like tea.  Or milk.  "Alright."

"Make sure you pick up, alright?"  The conversation was exhausting.  "I miss you."

"Whatever, theon."  He sounds Just as weary as he always did, his sigh loud enough that it crackles down the line.

And then he hangs up.

 

 

5.

"Sorry,"  Ramsay said, even though he did not look or sound sorry at all.  He looked like he was having fun, and Theon couldn't blame him, because he hadn't done anything wrong and really, Theon wasn't about to stop him.

But he did back away, hands up, even though Theon really hadn't wanted him to move off him at all, let alone get all the way on the other side of the bed. It's a small bed, but its still too far away.  

"Don't be sorry."  He had let his hands trail underneath the hem of Theon's shirt, and even though it was no where near making Theon uncomfortable, it was still new, and he had stiffened.  Ramsay had let go almost immediately.  "I didn't mind."

 _You see, Robb?_ He thinks, when Ramsay comes back and lays down beside him, the intensity of the previous moment evaporating as quickly as it had began.   _He isn't bad.  He's not the kind of person to take without asking._

"Hey Theon?"  Ramsay is playing with his fingers, tracing the lines of his palms and following the path of his veins up his arm.  "Would it be weird if I said that I love you?"  

It should be, because it's only February and they just started officially dating before Christmas, but this whole entire thing was moving faster than Theon would have thought possible.  Who cares, if they don't follow the normal rules?  Loving someone wasn't a bad thing, it was the best thing.  

"You don't have to say it back,"  Ramsay said, misinterpreting all the silence.  "I get its soon, I just wanted-,"  A shuddered breath.  "Wanted to tell you."

"It's not weird."  Theon rolled onto his stomach so he could look him in the eye.  "It isn't crazy.  It's us, and we don't have to follow everyone else's rules."

Something flashed in Ramsay's eyes, then, and he kissed him so hard that Theon didn't think he was ever going to stop.  "Then I love you."  Ramsay laughed while he was saying it, but not in a mean way, more like he couldn't believe he was admitting to it.  "I really, really do."

"I love you, too."  Theon said, even though the words felt funny in his mouth.

( _It's because you haven't had the practice,_ he thought, pushing away the thought of Robb that the words had called to the front of his mind.   _That's all it is._ )


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, remember this? We're back
> 
> This chapter might be a little slow while I ease myself back into the story, so be patient.

1.

He and Ramsay are in love.

Theon thinks that this might have been the happiest that he had ever been in his life, had it not been for the little looks and cryptic warnings that Robb keeps sending his way, like now, when they are eating lunch in The Market ( _the healthiest cafeteria there is, Theon would much rather eat meals only consisting of melted cheese, but Robb doesn't let him_ ) and Ramsay surprises him, sliding into the bench beside him and wrapping an arm around Theon's shoulders.

"Hey."  He kisses him on the cheek, lingering longer than he had to, possessively, and Theon grins, drunk on it, on this feeling of being wanted.  "Thought I'd come visit you."

Ramsay nods across the table at Robb and Robb nods back, looking down at his salad before turning back to fiddle with his phone, undoubtedly, Theon knew, texting Podrick about how terrible of a person Ramsay was.  

Ramsay likes to visit him a lot, Theon noticed.  Here, and at other meals, dropping by just so he could catch up with Theon about his day.  At the dorm in the mornings, talking him out of going to his most boring classes and spending an extra hour or two with him, or sometimes in the evenings, where Theon would always find himself being swept off to Ramsay's apartment, despite having made other plans other in the day.  It just didn't seem important anymore, these other things, not when he had Ramsay with him.

"Was hoping you might."  Not really.  He wanted to eat, and then go off to the library, and then he wanted to hang out with Robb, just the two of them alone so they could fix whatever awkwardness had settled between them from a few nights ago, but he couldn't say that.  This just seemed safer.  "Don't you have class?"

"Skipped it."  Ramsay rolled his eyes.  "It's lame. All you have to do is show up on exam days, and as long as you filled out the study guides he posted online, you're good as gold.  You?"

(Theon had thought that he was lying, when Ramsay told him that he had almost one hundred percent in all his classes, until he pulled up the grade book and showed him.  He's dating a genius."

"No, but,"  But he was going to study, but he had plans, but he needed to hang out with Robb, but it all faded away, the words evaporating off his tongue without ever making a sound, because Ramsay's face had broke into a smile and that arm around him had tightened, briefly, just a heart beat of a hug, and how do you say no to someone when they are that happy to see you?

"Great!  Back to my place then?"

Theon thinks about saying no.  Looks over to Robb, sees the look on his face, and knows the things that he must be thinking.  Knows that Theon and Ramsay are just proving him right, even though its not like that, not really.

"Sure,"  Theon hears himself say it without ever thinking the answer through, and all of a sudden the tray was being pulled away from even though he was not done, and a hand was guiding him out of the booth.  "See you later, Robb?"

"Yeah." The smile on Robb's face was tight, fake, wrong, like he didn't really believe it.  "Later."

 

 

 

2.

They do not see each other later.  Not then, not over the weekend, not until next Friday, when Theon enters his room and finds Robb already waiting.

Theon stands still for a moment, backpack half hanging off his shoulders. His roommate, Darren, gets up from his own bed and makes his way out of the room, pausing to shrug apologetically and clap Theon on the shoulders, like he's trying to tell him good luck.

"What are you doing here?"  Theon sets his bag down and is aware that it sounds much too light, mostly because it is not filled with any books, just clothes.  "Did we have plans?"

(He's done that, a few times, where he thinks that he has time for nothing but Ramsay and comes back to five messages on his phone from Robb or Jon or Asha.)

"Plans?"  Robb barks out a laugh.  "Because we see each other so often now?"

 _You were the one that said no,_ Theon thinks, angry, even though he has no right to be.   _The one who didn't want to room together and the one who thought he wanted new friends even though new things freak you out, and, oh right, you're also the one who went a picked up a Podrick when you were supposed to be coming home to me._

"I've been busy."

"Busy with Ramsay, you mean."

Theon does not like the way that he says his name, like it is something filthy, dirty.  "Yeah?  And what about it?"  He refuses to fight about this any longer.  Better to get it all out in the open now, before he and Ramsay have to have another talk about why Robb does not approve, most of which Theon was making up as he went because he does not think Ramsay would take kindly to being called a controlling asshole.  "He's my boyfriend.  We just started a relationship.  People tend to be together a lot in the beginning of relationships, Robb, or maybe you'd forgotten?"

"He's always around! He's eating up your entire life!"  

Theon threw his hands up.  "He's only eating up my life because you refuse to be a part of it when he's around!  I'm doing nothing -nothing- that you didn't do with Podrick, or Jeyne for that matter."  Robb winces, and Theon hangs on, wanting this to be over as soon as possible. "Remember Jeyne?  How constantly she was around us, but it was okay, because I was friends with her.  The only difference here is that you refuse to give Ramsay a chance.  Maybe if you did, you could hang out with us, too."

"I don't like him."  Theon had forgotten how stubborn Robb was.  It had been so long since it had been directed at him.

"You don't even know him."

"I don't have to.  I know you." Robb swallowed, hard.  "And you aren't you when you're with him."

Robb gives him a moment to answer, where he's supposed to fight back, or ask him what he means, or beg for him to give Ramsay just one more chance, but Theon stays silent.  Robb just nods, one jerky motion of the head that sends his curls flying, and then pushes past him, the door swinging shut behind him.

 

 

 

3.

Theon brings it up at dinner three nights later.

"Robb doesn't like you."  The words burst out of him, and Ramsay looks up from the counter where he was sorting through different sources he was using for his big research paper.  "I don't know why.  I keep telling him to give you a chance but-,"

"But he's jealous."  Ramsay leaves his paper behind and comes to sit beside him on the couch.  "He's had you all to himself for his whole life and now he has to share, that's all.  nothing to worry about."

"But I want him to like you.  Or at least tolerate you."  Theon realizes he is whining and tries to stop.  Ramsay doesn't like to hear him talk about Robb in the first place, not that he would say it outright.  There's no love lost between either of them.  "I put up with Podrick."

"Screw Robb."  There's a current of anger throbbing in Ramsay's voice now, and Theon leans back, about to protest, but Ramsay pulls him close again.  "Screw Podrick. Screw the whole world.  What's the world matter to the two of us?"

 _What does it matter,_ Theon thinks later, lying tangled in the middle of Ramsay's bed, lost in a sea of sheets.   _Ramsay's right- screw the world, everything and everyone in it, even Robb.  Especially Robb._


	23. Chapter 23

1.

They're going back home for the weekend.

Theon and Robb go back together, alone, without Ramsay or Podrick.  

Not, of course, that it was Theon's idea to do so.

"You could come.  Meet my sister.  Spend an evening with Starks."  He was lying on his back in Ramsay's kitchen floor, not quite sure how he had gotten there or why he was staying, only that Ramsay was standing above him, circling around the kitchen as he grabbed ingredients for the pasta that he was cooking as Theon's good bye dinner.  "Make Robb see how great you really are."

Because that's what Ramsay was- great.  He was respectful, and kind, and smart, and always held the door for Theon went they were walking into a building.  He'd never raised his voice (other than that one time, but they don't talk about the one time) and never made Theon feel like he was anything other than the most important thing in his life.  Theon just wished that Robb was around to see it.

"I already told you."  Ramsay smiled down at him.  "I don't think that's going to work."

"Asha's got an extra bedroom. And we don't have to be with the Starks, if you don't feel comfortable,"  Theon offers, regretting the words as soon as they are out of his mouth, wishing that he had not said them, because he had waited all year to be back with Arya and Bran and Sansa.  "It'd be fun."

"Theon."  Ramsay knelt on the ground in front of him, and even though his eyes were kind, his voice was final, like the decision was being made.  A lot of decisions were made without Theon ever knowing how it happened, but he knew the signs for when a verdict was coming.  "I said no.  We're not ready yet."

_But you said that you loved me.  You said you loved me after a month, and I said it back because it was going to make you happy.  How is this not the right thing to do?_

"But-"

"Theon."  Still kind.  Still the one who makes the final call.  Theon's not sure how it happened, that he's always the one following behind.  Maybe that's just who he was meant to be.  "No."

Theon nods, and tries to pretend that he agrees.

 

 

2.

There's some sort of soft rock pumping through the speakers.

They left Thursday night, late, and would be getting back early Tuesday morning, just in time for Robb's first class after the long weekend.  Theon had put off going home for as long as he could -skipped all the other weekend trips, begged off on spring break because of a project that did not exist, stopped calling, even- but could not bring himself to not go home this weekend, when he knew that it was because of Sansa's birthday.  Now, at four in the morning, with he and Robb having not exchanged more than a few words the whole trip, he wishes that he would have listened to Ramsay and stayed home.

"Pull in here."  Robb points at a gas station just barely visible off the exit.  "We'll grab some coffee and then I'll drive."

Theon had driven the whole time, because he was the better driver and unfamiliar roads tend to make Robb get confused and increase their chances of turning down some random road because he thought it "looked like the right one."  Now, though, he had driven almost straight through the night and he was tired enough that he wasn't going to argue.  

He stops, and he and Robb get out almost at the same time, their doors slamming close with one solid bang.  Theon lags behind and watches Robb walk ahead, jumping up onto the sidewalk, his hair in a fuzzy halo around his head and face lit against the neon of the sign glowing off the gas station wall, and finds that he can't take it, not for one moment more.  "Robb?"  He jogs to catch up, not sure what he wants to say, other than that the pressure building in his throat means that he must try to say something.  "Robb, wait."

"Yeah, Theon."  Robb looks tired, and not just the kind of tired that comes from staying up all night, but the bone weary kind where you have tried you best over and over and still had to deal with the idea that it will never be enough.

"I'm sorry."  That, Theon knew, was what he should have said a long time ago, the first time that he had blown him off to meet with Ramsay and didn't offer an explanation.  "Ramsay, he's nothing compared to you, I'd choose you over him every time and if that's what its coming down to here -you or him- I'll let it go, I won't see him again.  I just want to be your friend again.  He's not worth losing you."

It seems to have been the right thing to say, even though it wasn't the automatic fix-all that Theon was hoping for.  "Don't."  Robb looked like he was in pain. "You were right -Ramsay was right, before- I am jealous, of him, that he has you and I don't, it's not fair the way I've been acting."

"But I would.  If you needed me to do that."  Theon thought it was important to make sure Robb knew this.  "If you asked me to."

"I'm not asking you to.  That's not the kind of person I want to be."  Robb looked like he was in pain, standing there, though it might have been the light, and when he reached out to grip onto Theon's elbow, his hand was shaking. "You do whatever you have to, alright?  I'm going to be here.  Now and always."

They hadn't said it for almost the whole year, certainly not since Podrick and Ramsay had joined their lives, and Theon realized that he missed it more than he had missed anything.

"Yes," and the lump in his throat had disappeared, the knot in his stomach that had been there for the whole drive finally loosening.  "Now and always."

 

 

 

3.

Theon drops Robb off, and Theon drives home, taking the long way so he could see all the spots he used to love -his smoking corner, the garage, his father's house- until he finally pulls into the driveway, the engine spluttering to a stop as he pulls out the key.

"Asha?"  He doesn't shout her name like he wants to, not wanting to wake her if she was asleep, no matter how badly he wanted to see her, but he needn't have bothered.

"Theon?"  She is standing in the hallway, her girlfriend Carol standing behind her, blinking the sleep out of her eyes.  "You're home!"

She wraps him in a hug so tight he can feel it break him, and tears rise to his eyes, out of guilt for not coming home and guilt for not calling and fear, fear that maybe he is turning into something that he doesn't not want to be but does not know how to stop, fear that he has always been this person, deep down.  "I missed you."  She pulls back to take his face into her hands, searches his eyes.  "You stayed away for so long."

"I know,"  He says, and is ashamed that he is crying, coughing out the words around the pressure building in his chest and hiding his face in her neck to hide the tears burning in his eyes.  "I know.  I'm sorry."

"Are you alright?  I called Robb and he said that you weren't talking and that there was a boyfriend, and I-,"  Asha cut herself off, the frantic spout of words dying as she pressed her lips into a thin line, blinking back her own tears.  "But that doesn't matter.  You're home now."

"Asha?"

"Yeah?"

He is crying now, and he doesn't know why, because he should be happy.  He's back with his sister.  He and Robb are friends again.  And he's in love, isn't he?  In love with Ramsay, who is good to him, who is kind, who doesn't mean to hurt him, which is more than Theon can say about other people who have loved him in the past.  

"I'm just glad to be home."

"Alright, Theon."  She pressed a kiss to his forehead like she used to do when he was younger, even though she has to stand on tiptoe to do so now.  "Everything's going to be alright."

 

 

4.

He's sees Catelyn the next morning.

Theon stands in the doorway of the Stark home with a duffel bag hanging from his hand, and she is standing at the end of the hallway with a bowl full of cake batter pressed against her hip.  

He does not run to her, not like he did his sister.  Theon was not sure if that was allowed anymore, after everything, and she was only staring, looking at him like she knows every awful thing that had been happening over this past year- of the boyfriend and that Robb does not approve and that it had driven a wedge between them, that he could have been here for Bran's birthday like he had promised but decided not to, that he does not pick up the phone anymore when his sister calls because he is afraid that Asha would bully the truth out of him just like she did when they were kids.  

"Theon."  She breathes out his name, and then she is putting the bowl on the steps, hurrying forward, her hands fluttering at the edges of her cardigan before she can wrap him in a hug.  "I didn't know if you would be here."

"Robb's influence, mostly."  He felt terrible suddenly. It's strange, how the farther he gets away from Ramsay the more he starts to look over his decisions of the past few months and realize that they do not look like his, they look like some other person's, some stranger that he cannot recognize when he looks in the mirror.  "Mrs. Stark, I'm so sorry."

She must know that he means it.  Regret is practically vibrating off of him.  "How many times do I have to tell you to call me Cat?"

"Everybody does,"  Theon finishes, and it is a well worn joke between them, one that dissolves as she smoothes down his unruly hair and leaves her palm pressed against his forehead, like he is young again and she is checking to make sure that he does not have a cold.   

"At least your home now."  She busies herself with her cardigan, and Theon sees that she, too, is blinking back tears.  He had not thought that he had been this far out of reach from them.  "And in a few months, it'll be summer again, and you'll have time to get your head on straight."

Theon does not argue with her, even though part of him never loses the urge to defend himself.  This time, he knew he was in the wrong.  He did not want to grow into a man like his father, who insisted he was right despite the evidence that was screaming he was wrong.  

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grades are going like this:  
> Robb and Theon- college freshman  
> Rob-senior  
> Sansa-junior  
> Arya-freshman

1.

He and Asha are sitting on opposite sides of the table, the scraping of forks against their plates the only sound filling up the air between them.

"I promised myself that I wouldn't ask."  She sets down her fork and scrubs at her eyes with the heels of her hands.  Under the table, Carol reaches out and places a hand on her leg, grounding her.  It hurts, to see that she has become a team with someone else while he was away.  "But you are okay, aren't you?"

Theon almost chokes on his potatoes.  "What?"

"With the boyfriend."  Asha had had her share of hard times and even harder conversations.  She had been there when the police told their mother that their sons had died, and had been the one to prop her up when she collapsed.  She had been the first one to beg her father to go to rehab.  She would not shy away from this one.  "He's not hurting you, is he?"

"Did Robb say that?"  Theon turns to that first because he is just so sick of the accusations that Robb keeps throwing in Theon's face, then realizes that this was not the way to convince everyone that things at college were going fine.  "Ramsay doesn't hurt me.  He's great."

"And the fact that you stopped calling me right when you two got together is just a coincidence?"  Asha was good at arguing.  Could have been a lawyer, if she was able to graduate high school on time.  "And that you stopped hanging out with Robb?  And started to skip classes?"

"Robb never gave him a chance.  Ramsay and I were together no more than him and Podrick."  Lie.  Lie, lie, lie.  "And I've got all A's."

"You won't if you keep skipping."

Theon didn't want to have this conversation.  He wanted to eat a nice dinner, and then he wanted to go to the garage and see John and tell him that he was making college work, all thanks to the fact that he took a chance on him in his junior year, and then the next day, he was going over early to help the Starks set up for Sansa's birthday party.  

"Listen."  He was forcing himself to be calm.  To be the reasonable one.  "I'm sorry I never called.  I just got caught up in the idea of things being easy for me for once and I,"  Didn't want to call home and be reminded that I wasn't always this person, he thought, but that wasn't an acceptable answer.  "I was being a bad brother.  It won't happen again.  I'll call you everyday if you want."

Asha nods, a jerky motion of the head before standing to take her plate to the sink, chair scraping on the tile.  Theon starts to go after her, but she disappears up the stairs before he really gets out of his chair.

"If he's such a good guy,"  Carol said, narrowing her eyes at him, like this was her house and Theon was the stranger, "why didn't he come home with you?"

 

 

 

2.

He goes to the Starks a little after noon, and is immediately assaulted with a lightsaber to the ribs.

"Jesus!"  Theon starts to let out a string of worse words, but then looks down and remembers that he is around children, and Cat would have his head if he cursed around them this soon in the day.  "What the heck, Arya?"

Arya shoved her mask up and grinned at him, a little guilty, a little bit not.   She wasn't that young anymore, he remembered, probably going on fifteen.  "Sorry, Theon."  She grinned at him, and he saw that he got her braces off.  "You walked in the middle."

"The middle of what?"  He looked down and saw Rickon with a matching lightsaber, paused midswing.  "You were going to hit him that hard?"

"No."  She pouted.  Theon doesn't remember Arya pouting.  "I was going to slow it down, but then you walked in here without looking."

"Right, my bad."  This would not be happening if he stayed with Ramsay.  Theon tries to tell himself that it would be a bad thing, to miss out on a lightsaber to the ribs.  "I should have been looking out for giant swinging glow sticks.  Since when did you like Star Wars anyways?"

"She doesn't.  I do."  Jon snatches both of them up and grins at Theon.  His hair was ridiculously long.  This is what happens when Theon leaves- the kids take up sword fighting and Jon grows a ponytail.  "You're just in time- I can't figure out how to wrap her gift."

Theon follows him up the stairs to the different make up palettes on his bed and spends the next twenty minutes wrapping them, because Jon had demanded that they be wrapped individually despite the fact that he could not do it without help.  "I didn't think you would be coming."  Theon kept his eyes trained on the paper instead of rising to the bait.  "Thought you'd be with Snow."

"Don't call him that."

The words fall from his mouth automatically, and Theon winces.

"Why?"

"He doesn't like it."

"Oh, I see."  Jon's voice made it sound like he did see, and Theon wanted to snap at him, tell him that whatever he was thinking, it was wrong.  "Because we have to do anything he wants, right?"

"That's not it."  Theon threw the present on the bed, but it was too hard and flopped to the floor.  "I thought you would be happy for me."

"For getting a control freak for a boyfriend?"

 _He is not,_ Theon thought,  _a control freak,_ but he could not find the energy or the evidence to argue the point so he let's it slide.  "For getting a boyfriend that wasn't Robb."

"And I care about you dating my brother because?"

"Because I've been in love with him for as long as I can remember and he hasn't looked at me in that way, other than that one summer where he freaked out over being gay and wanted to experiment?"  All the things he could not say to Robb he wanted to say now, about how unfair it was that Robb was angry he got a boyfriend when Theon was just so happy that he could learn to like anyone that wasn't him.  "That I'm happy now?  That, alright, things aren't perfect, but at least I don't have to feel like I've taken a knife to the ribs every time I see him and Podrick together?"

Jon stared at him for a moment.  "Don't you think that might be part of the problem?  That, maybe you were so worried about moving on from him you ran to the first person who would take you?"   _That's sort of what happened,_ Theon thought, but people have met in worse ways.  "Even if they were the wrong sort?"

"The wrong sort?"  Jon doesn't break and Theon snorts, so tired, tired of this conversation and of Robb's worrying and that it entails.  "Fine.  Fine, Ramsay sucks and Theon can't take care of myself and you all can worry about me, you and Robb and Asha and your mother and the rest of your family, all sit around here and worry that I'm going to get myself hurt along the way."

He was breathing hard when he was done, which doesn't make sense, because it's not like he was yelling.  It was Jon that left first even though he was not the one who was angry, shaking his head and moving towards the door.  "We're your family Theon.  That's what families do."

 

 

 

3.

Sansa's birthdays aren't simple.

She doesn't like simple, not when the idea of being extravagant opens up so many other, more glamourous possibilities.  Theon had known that from the first time that he had come over to the Stark house and overheard her telling Arya that no, she couldn't just wear the regular pink nail polish, because she _couldn't wear a polish without glitter in it, Arya, and the one you spilled had the only sparkles that matched my dress._ Theon had ended up being dragged along with Robb and Jon while they walked to the dollar store to buy more, which was a night long event, because apparently there are many more shades of pink than any of the three of them had considered before that night.

"I'm going to give you my present early, alright?"  Theon slides in beside her while they are all hanging balloons.  They're gold, to match the color scheme, because everyone needs to have a color scheme for their sixteenth birthday.  

"Why?"  Sansa takes the envelope from him, amused, and starts to rip the seal.

"Because your mother can't know."  She had begged him for this present.  Called him, and called him again when he did not pick up, and the literally _begged_ over the phone for twenty minutes until Ramsay took the phone and threw it across the room.  "And if she finds out, _you're_ the one who takes the fall for it, alright?"

"No."  Sansa pulled out the tickets, all four of them, one for each of her little friends.  Theon winces when he sees the title, sure that Robb would find a way to slam Theon's fingers in the car door on the way home if he ever found out.  "I can't believe you!  I can't believe you actually got me tickets to see Fifty Shades of Grey!"

He didn't, technically.  He got her tickets to see Fifty Shades Darker.  Theon hadn't been able to figure out if that was worse or better, and decided that it didn't matter.  She was only one year away from being able to walk into the movie theater by herself, and besides, did it matter if it made Robb or Cat angry at him for a while, when it made Sansa this happy?

Sansa was hugging him so tight that it was hard to breathe, and when she spoke, it was muffled against his sweater.  "Thank you."  She pulled away and smiled, and he was again caught off guard by how grown up everyone had gotten without him realizing it, like they had morphed into whole new people while he was away.  "I've missed you, Theon."

There's a lump in his throat, and Theon is so tired of that, of burning tears and choking on the urge to cry.  "I've missed you, too.  But I had to stay."

"Because of the boyfriend?"  Theon didn't answer.  It was different, when he was talking to her, because even though he was older and supposed to be the strong one, Theon imagined that Sansa would be the only one who would really understand, what its like to love someone and not have them be goo for you at the same time.  To put up with all those things, just because you liked the feeling of being loved and were afraid that it would not happen again.   _Not, of course,_ he reminded himself, angry that he was even making the comparison, because Ramsay was not like Joffrey, he would be able to tell.   _That this is the same thing._ "I used to have a boyfriend that told me what to do all the time."

"I remember."  He remembered- the party, how she crawled to him across the floor, Theon's fist against his face, over and over and over until Robb pulled him away, because Robb was always there to tell him when enough was enough, to stop him before he became someone that he did not want to be.  Theon wondered, if that were true, why he finds it so easy to ignore the advice that Robb was giving him now.  "I also remember kicking the crap out of him."  A faint smile flits across her face even though it wasn't funny.  "I take care of you, Sansa.  Not the other way around."

"I'd like to return the favor."  She was earnest.  This entire family, earnest, and giving out love like it doesn't cost them anything.  "You're family Theon.  I love you like a brother, and if this guy hurts you-,"  She drags him down to her height by the tie ( _because when it's Sansa's party, not only do you have to buy a present, but you have to follow a dress code_ ) and looks him in the eye.  "I'll beat him up."

"Will you?"

"Well, no."  She lets him go and turns back to her balloons.  "But I'm sure Arya will."

 

 

 

4.

 _This is what home feels like,_ he tells himself, when Sansa bends down to blow out the candles on the cake and Arya leans in to push her head down into the frosting, when Bran rolls over his toes and Cat stops by to give him a hug three times an hour and Ned comes by just to check on him, hear about the boyfriend from him and shake his head like he doesn't really agree but isn't quite willing to tell him what to do.   _This is home, and it is where you belong, and if Ramsay makes you stay away from that, then maybe he's not that good, after all._

 (It's easier, of course, to make those decisions when he is miles away and has no sign of the things that Theon has been thinking, when he does not have to imagine the actual act of ending it, when he does not think about the look on Ramsay's face and the words he might say and the things he could do, how Ramsay loves him, how Theon loves him back, how he is not sure if he will ever get this again, and sometimes, isn't it enough to have an imperfect love when it is better than anything else the world has ever given you?)

 _This is what love feels like,_ when Jon pulls him outside to throw him off the porch and into the last remaining pile of the final snow of the year, when Rickon jumps onto his chest and knocks the laughter right out of Theon's lungs, when Robb reaches a hand down to pull him up but he misjudges and suddenly Theon is crashing against his chest, Robb's arm circled behind him to steady him on instinct ( _because that's what they always do, help each other find their balance_ ) and for one moment they are not remembering about Podrick and Ramsay, it is only Theon and Robb in this circle of snow.  

_You could be happy here._

 

 

5.

"Hey."  Theon freezes, juggling the two plates of cake in his hand as he stops in the middle of pulling the door closed.  A half inch more and it would have gotten to the part where it squeals as you slide it shut, but as it was, Robb hadn't noticed him.  "I'm sorry that I'm calling you this late."

Theon can't hear what it happening on the other side of the phone, but he can make a guess- that it is Podrick, and that Robb is not just calling to say good night.  Theon knows all of Robb's voices, and this one is his  _I don't want to hurt you_ voice, the bad news voice, the one that makes an appearance during conversations covering heavy topics or when he thinks that he might be hurting someone's feelings.

"No, everything's fine."  Robb reaches up to tug at the hair at the base of his neck, another nervous tick, and Theon knows that he should turn around and go back inside.  Knows that if he were being a good friend, that is what he would do, because you do not go stand on a porch in the middle of the night in thirty degree weather unless you want to ensure that you aren't overheard.  "Actually, it's not.  I called because things aren't fine."

"This isn't working?  And it's nothing to do with you, which is such a fucking  _stupid_ thing to say now that I hear it out loud, but it doesn't, Podrick.  You were sweet, and nice, and kind, and smart, and you brought me flowers all the time, but-,"  There's a pause where Theon assumes that Podrick must be answering.  "Exactly. You aren't him."

 _Who the hell,_ Theon thinks, tightening his grip so one of the plates begin to crumple up in his hand,  _is this him,_ but then Robb is talking again.  "I thought that if I just tried to look at someone else, I would be able to move on.  I thought that that would work, with a guy as nice as you.  But I'm still just as much in love with him as I was back in high school."  Another pause, longer, and this time Theon can hear the distant drone of Podrick's voice, even if he couldn't make out the words.  "I know that Theon's moved on.  But that's not the point."

Theon freezes, wishing that he would have gone back inside like any other decent person would, because this isn't fair, this wasn't allowed, he had spent over half his miserable life being in love with him and now that he's moved on -now that he's trying to make himself be happy- here Robb was, standing out on this snow covered porch, saying that he had loved him, apparently loved him for a while without saying anything, and all Theon can think is  _too little too late, buddy,_ and also, an angrier, more vindictive thought of  _so this is why you don't like Ramsay._

"I guess the point is that I'm sorry, because this whole thing was unfair to you.  And I didn't want to waste another moment of your time."  Robb turns a bit, and Theon can see the wistful smile that comes onto his face in response to whatever Podrick is saying.  "I mean, it wasn't an entire waste.  There were some good parts."  Another pause.  "Some  _great_ parts."

There's a loud bang from inside, and someone, mostly likely Sansa, starts to cry.  (There has not been a single birthday party that Theon remembers where Arya did not make Sansa cry.)  "Crap, Pod, I have to go.  Siblings.  But I want to talk to you- soon as I get back."  Another pause, and Theon pulls back into the house, close enough that he can still here.  "Screw the class, you're more important."   _Not more important than me, apparently._ "Breakfast Tuesday?  Great."

They say good bye, faster and more amicably then Theon would have thought after a conversation like that, and he barely has time to ditch the plates of cake on the table and duck behind the curtains before Robb is coming back inside, pausing at the still open door as he did so.

When Theon comes back out, he sees Jon standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at him.  Theon throws his middle finger in the air between them and goes for a new piece of cake.

 

 

6.

Theon says good bye to Asha before going to pick up Robb.  "You'll call, right?"  She's been wiping away tears since lunch.  "And if you can't call, text.  And if you can't text, at least send an email.  I'll even get snapchat, if that's what it takes."

"I'll call.  Twice a week, as per agreement."  

It was not Asha's terms.  It was Carol's, who had caught him right when he had gotten out of the shower.  Theon finds that he caves easier when he is facing down his sister's girlfriend while wearing nothing but a towel.  

"Okay."  She gives him a watery smile.  "You better get going, if you want to get Robb home on time."

Theon wants to tell her that it didn't matter, about Robb.  That it didn't matter about school, that he wanted to stay another day, but in the end, he doesn't, just gets in his car and drives to the Stark's, hops out and throws Robb's bags into the trunk.

"Alright?"  Robb looks happier than he has been in a while, maybe because of the time home, maybe because of the sudden absence of Podrick in his life.   _This is what you look like when you're in love with me,_ Theon thinks, the thought almost painful.   _Exactly the same as you always have._ "We good to go?"

"Yeah."  Theon makes himself smile.  He was happy now.  He would not risk it for a chance at something that might not even work, and would cost him the best thing in his life when it crashed and burned.  "Never better."


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who's back

1.

It works for a while, what Theon had planned. 

He calls his sister twice a week, just like he promised, sometimes even three if he gets bored or something exciting happens.  He starts picking up when the Stark siblings facetime, even when he's busy, even when he's with Ramsay.  He sees Podrick in the student center and the guy is too nice to even make a snide comment, just smiles and claps an open palm down on his shoulder and tells him that he's glad things between him and Robb are good again.  And most importantly, Theon is hanging out with Robb again, in the mornings and the afternoons between classes and on the weekends.  It's strange how much he missed him, like Robb was a missing limb that he had just gotten returned, like he didn't really know how to breathe in all this time he had been apart.  And now, for the first time in a long time, when they promise each other  _now and always_ it sounds like the truth, not a lie or an apology or a pacification.

He's happy, and maybe that's how he should have known that it was going to end.

"Theon."  They had been kissing.  They had been at date night, a good night.  Theon had got Ramsay flowers, and yeah, maybe Ramsay didn't like that as much as Theon would have, but he still smiled and said thank you and put them in a vase right where everyone who walked in the door could see them.  "I don't think this is going to work out."

For a moment, Theon's brain didn't seem to be able to register the question, and then it did, the words smacking him right in the face.  "What?"  Theon was the one to pull away, crawling to the very edge of the couch.  Ramsay stayed where he was, already standing to pull on his coat, grabbing his keys to drive Theon home.  "Ramsay, what-,"

"It's fine.  Okay?  I don't want you to worry, this happens, it's just-,"  Ramsay shrugged his shoulders.  "You're not that into me.  I get it."

"Ramsay."  Theon didn't really know what to do.  It just didn't make sense, what Ramsay was saying to him.  "Ramsay, I  _love_ you.  I told you that I love you."

Over and over and over, more times than he wanted to, more times than he should, all because he knew it was what Ramsay wanted.  It was what kept Ramsay happy.

"You claim to love me.  But you don't.  And that's alright."  Theon is standing, somehow still smaller than Ramsay even though he is the taller one, pulling at his arms and trying to get him to sit back down, so they can talk, so Theon can explain things, so Theon can say sorry, so Theon can make him stay.  "I understand."

"I don't."  He didn't.  He would, later, looking back, ask himself how he could have been so stupid to think that anything that came out of this man's mouth could be real.  "I don't understand at all, Ramsay, what's this about?"

"You just don't seem happy with me anymore.  You're always talking to your sister, or people from home, or hanging out with Robb."  Ramsay still wasn't meeting his eyes.  If he would just look at Theon's face he would know how silly this was, how Theon loved him, how sorry he was to make Ramsay doubt that even for a moment.  "You hang out with Robb a lot more than me."

"That's..."  He doesn't know why he says what he does, why he gives away these things when he doesn't want to.  "That's nothing, Robb's- Robb's just a friend, he's a boy from home, he's,"   _He's the only thing I ever had, please don't take that away from me to, but I will, I'll let go of him if it means you stay just so I know what its like to have someone love me, partial love is better than playing with fire and then ending up with nothing at all._ "He's no one, Ramsay, not compared to you.  You're,"  He had finally started saying the things that Ramsay wanted him to say, he knew.  Theon could tell from the way that Ramsay suddenly shifted his attention back to him, and Theon breathed out a sigh of relief.  "You're everything."

 

 

2.

It starts him on a slippery slope.

He misses phone calls because he wants to be watching for Ramsay when he stands on the street corner for Ramsay to pick him up. He's always late now, but Theon still stands out there no matter how cold he gets, for however long it takes, even a whole hour once.  He's stopped picking up the phone when Arya or Bran's face flashes across the screen, because he's either with Ramsay and doesn't want to think that he isn't paying attention, or he's worried that Ramsay might want to be with him and Theon would miss the text because he is talking to one of Robb's siblings.  And he's stopped hanging out with Robb again, afraid to go out in public because Ramsay might see them or one of Ramsay's friends would see them, and he doesn't want to hang out with Robb alone because then he gets that swarm of guilt in his stomach, like he was doing something bad, something secret, and when he inevitably told the truth of where he had been to Ramsay, Ramsay would get angry, and Theon would have to admit that he had been the one in the wrong.

So it's hard, to make excuses as to why he needs to hang out with Robb, and it's hard to look at him without remembering the phone call he had overheard between Robb and Podrick, and he can't say  _now and always_ without feeling like it was a lie, and Robb can tell, but he can't figure out what's wrong fast enough to make Theon feel like he can stay.  Robb's slow on the uptake.  Ramsay isn't.  Ramsay sees.  Ramsay  _knows._ And Ramsay has rules, rules that say that Theon can have Robb or he can have Ramsay, and really, who would pick the boy who might love him over the one who certainly does?

( _Even if he yells at you.  Even if he sends a fist swinging into the dry wall and you thought it was going to hit your head but he tells you later, no, baby, no, it wasn't even close, and you accept his apologies and believe his excuses like the sorry, stupid little boy you are, and sometime in the middle of the night you go out and hang a picture frame over the hole in the wall because you know he'll get mad if you look at it during breakfast. Even if he makes you feel bad at yourself.  Even if he thinks your poems are shit.  Even if he gets jealous over everything, real and imagined, over everyone, your classmates and your sister and your best friend's younger sister when they pull your attention away from him.  Even if he makes you say good bye to the one person who you knew always had your back.  Because he says he loves you.  Because he's a sure thing, the closest thing to a solid foundation you've ever gotten to stand on.  Because he made you feel safe, once, and you're convinced you can find that feeling again if only you manage to be good enough_.)

The answer: no one would.  So Theon does what he says.  He listens to Ramsay, and for the most part, he stays away from Robb, unless he's sure that he's not going to get caught.

 

 

3,

"I don't need you just to love me,"  Ramsay had said, clinging to him, pressing him down into the bed, and it hurts, it always always always hurts, but Ramsay had said that this is the way he likes it and this is the way it's supposed to feel and everyone else he had been with had been able to take it, so Theon keeps quiet, pretends it doesn't hurt him and bites down onto the blankets or the pillows or his knuckles every time he feels like he might cry out, and tries not to think about what Robb would say if he could see him now.  "I need to be the one you love the  _most._ "

"I do,"  Theon forces the words out through gritted teeth, and he's pretty sure that he doesn't mean it, doesn't mean anything he's saying and these meaningless things keep leaving his mouth just because he knows it is what Ramsay wants to hear, and it's not a matter of keeping him anymore, it's a matter of just making it through the night, one day to the next.  If someone had asked him ( _and in his head that person is always Robb_ ) he's not sure he would be able to tell him where the truth ends and the lies start.  He's not sure that really matters.  "I do, I swear."


	26. Chapter 26

1.

He remembers the first time his father hit him.

It had hurt, but over the hurt, layered over it like ice, was the shock.  The  _wrongness_ of it, even as he crouched on the floor and raised a shaky hand to dab at the blood trickling from his split lip, the way he had stared at the bit of red staining his fingers like it might disappear, because it just did not seem possible that it could be real.  The way that the sting of it came later, much later, after Theon had pushed himself off the floor and held every muscle in his body puled taught like a rubber band set to snap, braced for the impact of the next one, should his father send another fist or bottle or any other object flying in his direction.

He remembered that, how he had stood and faced him, chin up and shoulders set, how it never occurred to him to cower, to run.

This was not like that.

"Ramsay.  No."  Theon cringes at that word, but he cannot stop it from falling free from his mouth, and it hits the ground between them and shatters the scene like glass.  He should have known better.  He knows not to say that word, how it only makes it worse.  It's one of Ramsay's rules.  "I didn't mean it."

"Didn't mean what?"

He's yelling at him, towering over him.  Theon is pressed with the small of his back against the edge of the counter, leaning back as far as he can bend without toppling over, and never in his life had he felt so small.  And he doesn't even have an answer, because he can't remember what he had done to set Ramsay off so quickly, only that one moment they were having a nice meal and the next the plates were smashed onto the floor with a sweep of Ramsay's arm and it was clear that he was intending to send Theon sprawling after them.  

(There's normally a build up.  Time to ease the tension, when he can feel it building.  Moments where he can dodge the storm that keeps building behind Ramsay's eyes.  But sometimes the storm is hidden.  Sometimes it's not just a thunderstorm.  Sometimes it's a tsunami and it's all the Theon can do not to drown.)

"I didn't mean it,"  Theon repeats, stupid, useless, and when his head snaps back and the blood blooms in his mouth, there's a part of him that thinks he must deserve it, if he's not even smart enough to remember where he went wrong.

 

 

2.

 _"_ He's hurting you."  This had been weeks ago, back when the marks that Ramsay left on him were only shadows instead of full fledged bruises, where Theon still thought this was something that they could work through without Theon getting hurt.  It was right around the time when Theon first started skipping phone calls and making excuses.  He's pretty sure that the conversation was only happening because Asha asked Robb to check in on him, but that didn't mean that Theon was any less angry about it.  "Don't try to tell me he doesn't hurt you."

They've had this conversation before.  Theon knows his lines, the things he's supposed to confess, how Robb would do everything he could to make it better.  For years Theon had been running to Robb and spewing the truth into his hands no matter how hateful, expecting him to carry the weight of his problems for an evening or a week or however it long it took before Theon was strong enough to bear it on his own.

This time, Theon was strong enough.

And besides.

He doesn't want to think what Ramsay would do if he found out that Theon had said anything.  And with Robb's hero complex, Ramsay would know that Theon had told, had spilled stories when there was really nothing to tell.

"He's not hurting me."  It was so cold that their breaths were fogging up in big great clouds that covered their faces.  So quiet that he thought that Robb would be able to hear everything, right down to the jump in his pulse that meant that he was lying. "I swear it."

"You're a liar."  Robb's words were biting.  Theon could feel it in the way they chewed at him, ripped him right at the stomach.  "You've never been as good a liar as you thought you are."

"Still a better liar than you."

"Not the point."

"What is the point?"  Theon shook his head and shoved his hands deep into his pockets to hide the way they were trembling.  Ramsay had took his coat, said it would be nice to have something to mark him as Theon's the way that Theon has all of Ramsay's sweatshirts.  Theon didn't think to protest that it was his only one and he didn't have money to buy a new one.  Still didn't know how to tell Ramsay no.  "Because I'm not seeing one."

"I don't want you hurt."  Robb's brows were furrowed, and in the darkness, Theon could barely make out the way that Robb's eyes were skittering from Theon to the ground and back again, like he was actually nervous.  "You don't deserve to be hurt."

"What do I deserve?"  He was whispering.  He didn't want to look at Robb, so he stared at the door instead, read the date and time for a support group that helped members reach higher members of self love.  It was so ironic he almost laughed out loud.  

 _Tell me it's you,_ Theon thought, pleading, silently, trying to make Robb understand without saying the words out loud.   _Tell me it's you and I swear, I'll tell you everything, I'll leave him, I won't even fight.  I won't even ask for the damn coat back, so long as I get you._

Robb doesn't.  Just stares at the ground and shakes his head once, twice, sending the curls that Theon loves so much tumbling down over his forehead. "Not him,"  He says, and then repeats it, just to make sure that Theon heard.  "No one deserves someone like him."

 

 

 

3.

Eventually, he stops being and turns into a mess of bruises.

They're everywhere.  Arms, legs, stomach, even one nasty one curling around his neck and below his ear.  Some old, some new, all in different stages of healing- in the mirror, he looks like someone had taken out a brush and painted him every shade of hurt that they could think of.

 _You just have to be good,_ Ramsay had said, after the last bit of his rage had eked out of him and he sat on the edge of his bed, massaging the place where his knuckles had split.  Theon had wanted to ask him what right he had to look after his own pain when he left Theon like this, but he doesn't.  All his good lines were staying silent, the last place that Theon thought they would ever be.   _Why is it so hard for you to be good?_

 _I'm sorry,_ is what Theon had said, curling in on himself to stop the ache, and he made up his mind that he would never tell another soul about this for as long as he lived, the way he curled up on the ground at Ramsay's feet like a dog that doesn't know how to stop being loyal and apologized for something that someone else had been done to him.   _I'll be better next time._

 _I know,_ Ramsay had said, digging his hands into Theon's hair and twisting, and maybe it was supposed to be comforting but it hurt, everything always hurts.   _I know._

 

 

4.

"Tell me it doesn't hurt."  They are in the laundry room.  Theon didn't ask him here but Robb came.  Not that it was hard to find him.  Theon still did his laundry at the same time they had at the beginning of the year.  It was Robb that quit, claiming that he couldn't stay up that late with the early classes he had scheduled that semester.  "Tell me that and I'll let you go."

He's got his hand wrapped around Theon's throat.

Gently.

Gentle enough that all Theon had to do was breathe and Robb's hand would move with the motion, more of a cradle than a chokehold.  It was a mirror image of the way that Ramsay had pinned him against the wall the night before, but Ramsay never would have touched him so lightly, never would have been so careful of the bruises that were splashed from chin to collar bone.

"Tell me that you love him."  His fingers are pressing down, just a bit, right by his ear where his chin met his neck.  Theon wonders how long Robb had been tracking the bruises, how long ago he had noticed the stiffness in the way that Theon moved.  There was no way to see the wounds in the darkness (Theon hadn't bothered with the lights, and Robb had marched straight across the room to get to him) but his hands still searched them out like he knew they were there. "Tell me you love him, and if I actually believe you, I'll walk away."

This time, Theon could answer.  This time, Theon knew his lines.  "I love him."

"You don't."  Robb tightened his grip, just a bit, and then his hand moved lower, pushing Theon's chin up so he had to look him in the eye.  "You can't."

"I do."

"He doesn't love you."

"He does,"  Theon chokes out, and the words were desperate, half a sob.  "He  _has_ to."

"You don't need him."

"I do, I do, you don't understand, you-," Theon wrenches himself away, moves to stand so the row of washers was between them, just to keep himself from running back to Robb.  It was nice to be held like that again, even if the hands were only half comfort and still half threat.  "I love him, Robb."

"He beats you."

"You don't get to do this."  Theon said, not sure what he was saying, if he was managing to say anything at all.  "Not after everything."  He was angry, angry at the wrong person, but it felt good to feel something other than fear so he ran with it, let it carry him away.  "I loved you.  Forever.  And he loves me  _back._ Do you understand?  Do you understand how good it feels for me to finally have that?"

Someone else might have called him on the bullshit.  Someone else might have gotten angry right back, got right and their face and screamed that it wasn't their fault.  Those people weren't Robb.

"He doesn't love you.  But I do.  Maybe not the way you want me to," Robb added, and Theon rolled his eyes, scoffed out a laugh because  _come on, bullshit, stop pretending,_ but he only knew the lie because of a phone call he wasn't supposed to hear and he wasn't cruel enough yet to call Robb on it, "But I do love you.  And I know what love looks like.  Ramsay doesn't even come close."

"Maybe he's as good as I'm going to get!"  Theon was all out yelling now.  He wondered how long it would be before an RA came to cut it out. He hoped they don't overhear much before the intervene- he doesn't feel like being checked in on by yet another person who  _just wants the best for him_.  "You ever think of that, Robb?"

"That's not true."  Robb's had gone soft.  Soft, and sorry, and understanding, and he was starting to reach out to him again, and Theon knows if those hands are on him he won't ever have the strength to walk away.  "You have to know that's not true."

"I don't.  I really, really don't, so if you don't mind,"  He opens up the door and Robb lets himself be ushered out into the hall, and in the moments where Theon is feeling the most unfair, he thinks that if only robb had stayed, if only Robb had worked just a little bit harder, they could have stopped this before it really got started.  Most of the time, Theon lays the burden where it belongs, but sometimes he doesn't have the strength to carry it, so he ends up parceling off bits and giving it to others.  "I've got work to do."

 

 


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we've got like one more filler chapters and then we're back to the good stuff

1.

Robb is talking about tomorrow's.

Theon doesn't really have anything to say.  He used to think about the future constantly, every waking moment working towards it, like it was some sort of mirage that he never thought he was going to reach.  College, and safety, and happy endings.  A shitty apartment with a leaky sink, shelves full of books bought second hand, a box full of his journals stuffed into a corner.  A dog, maybe.

And Robb.

Always Robb.

Theon doesn't worry about things like that anymore.  Doesn't have to.  Doesn't have time to, not when every scrap of motivation he has left in him is being put to use just helping him make it through the day, make it to the moment where he can crawl into bed and lock the door behind him and ignore the way that his roommate looks at him, the moment where he is out of Ramsay's sight and can finally relax.  ( _Though he can't relax, is the thing.  Ramsay is not a person, he is a presence, an ever there, all knowing presence, and he will know, somehow, if Theon does something wrong.  If Theon stops being good._ ) 

"We'll have to do something fun this summer," Robb is saying.  The two of them are walking down the sidewalk to class.  Theon gets this two times a week- two times a week where even if Ramsay saw him, Theon would not have to make excuses.  Two times a week where he does not have to fake sick or pretend to be busy and can just bask in the glow of being around Robb again.  Two times a week where he does not have to be afraid.  "Go to the beach, maybe?  You had fun last time."

Robb keeps suggesting this.  About summer, about a break.  How all Theon needed was some time away, a little bit of distance to get his clarity back.  A day out in the sun, a night out in the city, and a bit of fun would let him snap back into himself.   Theon doesn't know how to tell him that maybe the old Theon wasn't ever going to come back.  That Theon had ripped that person right out of his skin and thrown him into the gutter, stomped and stamped until that old shadow of himself slithered away.

He never would have guessed that he might have wanted to be that person again.

"Or the lake house.  Either one."  Theon hasn't responded, and out of the corner of his eye, Robb is watching.  Always watching, always worried, always tracking his skin to see if the bruises were healing or if he had gathered new ones.  "We can stay there for a week, just the two of us. Take the boat out in the afternoons, sleep through the morning."

He's supposed to agree.  But he doesn't.

"I don't know if I'm going to make it home this summer," He said, and Robb's footsteps, which had been so in time with Theon's own, faltered.  "I promised him I'd stay."

"Promised who?"

"Ramsay.  He asked me to move in with him."  Asked is the wrong word.  Told him.  Informed him.  Demanded it of him, and Theon had not known how to say no.  Wasn't sure that he wanted to say no.  "I said yes."

Robb stopped walking entirely and stared at him.  "You'd rather stay with him than go home with me."  Robb reached out to him and Theon jerked away, because the walking together, yes, that was safe, that was allowed, but touching wasn't.  Ramsay didn't allow Robb to touch him.  No one was allowed to touch Theon unless Ramsay said they could.  "You'd rather stay with a man that beats you than come home to your family."

The old Theon would have fought.  Would have lashed out, said something like  _I don't have any family, remember_ even though they both knew the Starks counted, might have shoved Robb back. Would have at least done something.  

This Theon just stands there.  "You don't get it," is what this Theon says, and it sounds pathetic even to his own ears.  

"You're right," Robb said, and Theon could feel it, that thing that Ramsay had been promising him would happen, the moment where everyone decides to leaves him.  "I don't."

 

 

 

2.

The thing that no one understands is that there are good days.

Days where Theon doesn't have to be afraid.  Days where Ramsay doesn't come anywhere close to the man who would rage and scream and hit, hit and kick and do whatever else he wanted.  Days where Theon was happy, and never once thought about cowering, or choking on his own silence, or about needing someone to come rescue him.  Days where there's no hint of a lie when Ramsay says that he loves him.

"I love you," He had said, and they were so wrapped up in each other than Theon hadn't thought to question it, because it had been long enough since the last fight that all the bruises were fading and that night Ramsay's hands were soft.  "You know that, right?"

His hand was brushing under Theon's eye, where one little shred of skin had been slashed away.

( _I hadn't meant to,_ Ramsay had said later, after Theon had cleaned up the blood and the shards of the plate that Ramsay had smashed.  He had thrown it at the wall where Theon was standing and Theon could not get his arm up fast enough to shield himself, but he was so scared that he didn't notice the cut until the blood was trickling down his cheek.  And he knew that he didn't mean to, because Ramsay had stopped right in the middle of his tirade and stared at him, looking like he wanted to apologize but not knowing how.  He still had that look on his face when Theon went to find him and saw him sitting on the couch, head in his hands.   _You have to know that I didn't mean to do that._

And Theon's reply had been  _I know, Ramsay, it was an accident,_ never bothering to once wonder why he was the one giving Ramsay comfort, never once stopping to think that if he apologized for this time being on accident, than he must have known what he was doing all those other times he hurt him _._ )

"I know."  Theon caught at his hand, pressed his knuckles to his lips.  Ramsay smiled.  He had a pretty smile.  A sweet smile.  This was the smile he gave when he wanted to be nice- the smile he had when he wanted to be cruel was a different beast entirely.  

"Don't leave."  He was pressing Theon to him.  "I'll miss you too much.  Just stay."  He's running his hands through Theon's hair, sometimes stopping to twist, to pull.  Theon closes his eyes against it.  It doesn't hurt all that much.  It wasn't anything he couldn't get used to- and besides, how long had it been since he had someone tell him that they needed him, that they wanted him?  He's not sure anyone ever had.  "Stay here with me."

"I'm not going anywhere," Theon had mumbled, muttering the words into his chest, slurring the syllables together.  "I'm staying right here."

"Just move in with me."  He said it like the thought had just occurred to him, but Theon knew better.  Nothing ever  _just occurs_ to Ramsay. There is nothing spontaneous about it.  He is always carefully planned, always calculating three moves ahead before Theon even knew that they were playing.  "At the end of the semester.  Then you'll never have to leave."  Ramsay's smile was still soft.  "And I'll always have you right where I want you."

Theon didn't even consider saying no.  He might have, if it was a bad day.  If he had still been calling his sister.  If Ramsay was wearing his other smile.  If.

But that's not how it happened.  That day, it was a good day, and Theon didn't want to ruin it by doing something that Ramsay didn't like.

 

 

3.

Of course, there's the trade off.  

With the good days, there's a build up.  A tension.  A tidal wave building up against the dam, and eventually that wall is going to crumble, to collapse.  And the more good days in a row they have, the worse it will be when Ramsay finally decides that Theon wasn't trying hard enough.

Today was the bad day.

Today was the price that Theon had to pay for all those good moments, all those good days he soaked up without bothering to think about what it might cost him.

You'd think he would have known by now.  Nothing in life comes without a cost.

"Don't you think that's too much, Theon?" It's his not nice smile.  Theon clenches his hand around the fork, then relaxes.  This Ramsay isn't angry Ramsay.  This Ramsay is just bored.  This Ramsay just wants something to play with.  It's Theon's own fault for being the closest target.  "Aren't you a little worried about all the weight you're gaining?"

It's stupid.  It's a lie.  And it's juvenile, something that seventh graders would sneer across the lunch table to one of their friends who dared to eat two cookies instead of one.

But Theon still pushes the plate away.

 

 

4.

That had been two weeks ago, and now Theon's not sure where the game ended and he began.

He wasn't eating.  Not really.  Not when Ramsay was always watching, always makin those comments, comments about Theon's weight and how he liked his boys to look nice, always nice, better than everyone else and that takes work, Theon, doesn't it, are you afraid of a little work, Theon?"

And Theon had said no, because that was what he was supposed to say.  And he only got half the amount of food he normally did, and then half of that, and then even that amount seemed too much, seemed too dangerous, seemed like the enemy.  Eventually, the game stopped being Ramsay's and started being Theon's instead, because yes, he did want to look good, he wanted to  _be_ good, he wanted to be right, even if it was in something as small as this.

 

 

 

5.

There's no fists for a while after that.

Doesn't need to be.

Ramsay seems to found that words work much better, both as praise and as punishment, and they left less evidence behind.  Gave Theon less of a reason to fight, as long as Ramsay could convince him that all these things he says are the truth.

He always could.  Ramsay was very convincing. And Theon was never very good at believing in himself, anyways.  That's what Robb was always there for.  And Robb wasn't here, now.

"So good," Ramsay muttered, his hands running up and down Theon's sides, tugging at the waist band of his pants, running his fingers over the dip in his ribs.  It wasn't very noticeable but it was there.  Theon had seen it in the mirror, how his bones stuck out more than they had before, and wasn't sure whether to be proud or ashamed.  But Ramsay seems to like it, so it must be a good thing.  "So pretty."

"Wanted to look good,"  Theon said, because he needed to say  _something_ and he doesn't want to start talking about how he doesn't like it, how he remembered being strong once but now all he is, is hungry, hungry for food and for touch and something that Ramsay couldn't give him, something that reminded him of a bit of Robb, a bit of home.  "Wanted to look good for you."

"Good," Ramsay says, and Theon drinks up the praise like it might be all he needs to survive, like he can live off it, and is not really confident that he won't be able to.  Thinks he might try.  "Good."


	28. Chapter 28

1.

Theon is helping Robb pack.

The plan was for both of them to help each other pack, because Robb would spend entire hours wondering if he had forgotten something and would not be able to stop himself from checking and rechecking the insides of empty drawers, and Theon is incapable of folding his clothes.  Before, back when the end of the year was far away but still close enough to think about, they had said that they would pack their things and load them into the car and drive home together, Robb and Theon in one car with Theon's things, and Ned and Catelyn in the other car with all of Robb's.

But that was before.

 _He doesn't love you,_ Robb had said the night before.  It had surprised Theon when he said it, because they had been having a good night, just the two of them playing video games with a bag of half eaten chips between them.   _And you don't love him.  Quit lying to yourself._

Theon had gotten mad.  Had yelled, and stormed out, and today they both seem determined to keep these last moments free of the resentment that had been lacing both of their voices for months, because both of them were quiet.  

"You can still come back home."  Robb had his fists clenched around a shirt, a t-shirt that Theon recognized instantly as his own.  He's not sure when Robb took it, or why he brought it with him here.  "We can go get your stuff.  It's probably still in boxes, you don't have to even come with me, I'll carry it all down to the car myself.  Theon," Robb had stepped forward and has one hand curling over Theon's cheek where the freshest bruise was.  "You never have to see him again."

"I want to stay.  I  _need_ to stay."  Every time they talk about this, Theon is filled with some indescribable panic, like Ramsay might  _know,_ somehow.  And he always seems to, maybe just from the guilt that was written across Theon's face, because those nights he always finds an excuse to punish him.  "He's my..."

Theon doesn't say what he is.  Doesn't really know.  He doesn't think boyfriend is the right word, but he doesn't know what else to say, either, because all the other words he was thinking were too big and intense and all encompassing for Theon to say them ( _things like, he's my entire world, he's the one who decides, he needs me, I need him, I don't remember what it's like to be without him_ ) and every single one would prove Robb's point.

"Don't tell me you love him."  Robb tossed the shirt into one of the boxes without folding him and Theon sighed.  They had almost made it through without fighting.  "Don't tell me you can love someone that hurts you like he does."

Theon doesn't bother denying it.  There was no longer any point- he limps when he walks and sometimes it hurts to breath and his face is painted black and blue, not to mention the hand shaped bruise that always circled his wrists and stained his hips.  

"Everyone that's supposed to love me hurts me instead," Theon growls out, and he feels like that little kid again, sitting at the top of the steps waiting for Asha to come home even though he knew that she wouldn't, angry at his father for hurting him and angry at his mother for not being able to remember, even though he keeps telling himself he outgrew that long ago.  "Why is this any different?"

Robb reels back like Theon had hit him.

"Give me the key."  He stands up from the bed so fast that he sends boxes off the side, spilling impeccably folded clothes out onto the floor.  He's breathing hard, his hand trembling, and for the first time in Theon's life, he's actually afraid of him.  "The key, Theon, give it to me."

"What key?"  Theon laughed, loud and brittle and breaking.  "The key to his apartment?  He'll just let me in."

"Not his.  I don't care about him, or what you do there."  The words shock Theon because Robb sounds like he means it.  Apparently, this is the point where Robb gets tired and leaves him.  Theon hadn't thought there would ever be a time where this happened.  He had always thought that no matter what everyone else thought, there would be nothing so terrible that Robb wouldn't care about him.  "The key to mine."

Theon stares at him.  He'd had an open invitation to the Stark house ever since they've been friends, and he's had that key so long that the metal was scraped and dull.  It stuck in the lock whenever he had to sneak in, and the chain- the chain was still that thing that Robb had made for him when they ran the craft station at bible school, but the ends were fraying so bad that Theon has to redo the knot every other week.  

"Here."  His hands were numb when he reaches for them, like there were ants buzzing underneath the skin.  The first time, he drops them, and when he's still unable to loosen the chain from the others, he just yanks, breaking the string and sending beads flying everywhere until there's just a key dangling from the string.  "Take it."

Theon slaps it down into Robb's palm and then turns to wrench the door open.  The whole way through the hallway and down the stairwell he's expecting Robb to call him back, to apologize, to hand over the key and say that's there if Theon needs him, just like he's always been, but as far as Theon can tell, he doesn't even step outside to watch him leave.


	29. Chapter 29

1.

It's been a month and Theon still feels like he's walking on eggshells.

He can't tell if it's really that bad or if he's just that paranoid, but Theon is constantly afraid of making the wrong move, like Ramsay is waiting to throw him out on the street at the slightest provocation, which is ridiculous.  If there's one thing that Theon is sure of, it's that Ramsay will want to keep him here.  Wants him close.  Wants Theon to be only his, which means that even if he might scream and yell and hit and kick ( _or worse, talk soft, talk so soft and smile so sickly sweet and he convinces Theon to light the match himself and then watch him cry when everything he cares about goes up in flames_ ) Theon never has to worry about being turned away.  Never has to think about being left behind again, and for that, Theon thinks that everything else is almost worth it.

"Theon."  Ramsay comes around the side of the hallway and Theon jumps where he is standing, almost let's the dish he was drying slip through his fingers.  He catches it, though, which is good.  Ramsay is already tense, today.  One of his dishes shattering against the tile floor would have been more than enough to make him snap.  "Theon, did you wash that shirt like I asked?  The blue one?"

Did he?  Theon doesn't know.  He thinks he did, but he's been so busy, with working and writing and still trying to try and pretend that everything is fine, fending calls from his sister and the Starks and Catelyn and his college friends, basically everyone but Robb.  Even Jon called, once, and Theon had watched it ring without picking it up, and then deleted the voice mail without listening.  But he's pretty sure he did.  Must have done, if Ramsay had asked him to, he always drops everything to do what Ramsay needs from him.  But he doesn't remember Ramsay even asking.

( _This is a new game they play.  Ramsay wanting things but not asking for them, and Theon trying to guess, trying to fill every need at once.  He puts dinner on the table for when Ramsay walks through the door and doesn't cry out no matter how badly Ramsay hurts him, because that's just how Ramsay likes it, and he keeps the apartment clean and the gas tank of the car full even though Theon doesn't have the money to fill it and washes a load of laundry every three days just in case Ramsay might want something, and Theon keeps himself clean, everything about him, because Ramsay, more than anybody that Theon had ever met, likes things to be clean._ )

"I think so," is what he says, even though he is almost blinded by the panic rising up in him.  He's backed into the corner of the kitchen counter, his hands bent tight around the edges, trying to think, trying to remember, bracing himself for the impact if he was wrong.  

"Theon."  The tone in his voice is dangerous.  This is Ramsay's teaching voice.  Theon never likes the lessons that he learns.  "Do you think or do you know?"

"I know," Theon says, even though he doesn't, because there's a fifty percent chance that he gets this right.  If the shirt is washed than everything will be fine, and if it isn't, well, he'll already be in trouble, so the lie won't matter much.  "It's clean."

Ramsay hums, disappears back into the bedroom, and Theon holds his breath until he reappears wearing the blue shirt.

"I found it," Ramsay says, smiling, and Theon gets the sense that he had known exactly where it was the entire time. "Was hiding in the back."

Before he leaves, Ramsay stops to kiss him on the cheek, and Theon shudders.

 

 

 

 

2.

He sleeps on the couch.

There are no blankets.  No pillows.  Ramsay never offered and Theon never asked, just lays out on the bed with his neck and back aching, his legs curled up under him because he doesn't fit.

"I can't sleep with another person in the bed," Ramsay had said, and it was one of their good days, so every request that Ramsay was making had to be accepted.  And at the time, it had made sense- some people like their space, after all.  Some people don't like the sound of another person's breathing.  Some people just don't like to share.  "And I have to get up earlier than you, so it makes sense that I take the bed.  You understand, right?"

The hardest thing to believe was that Theon had. That it made sense. That it never occurred to him to ask why they couldn't take turns with the couch, seeing as how Theon was the one with the bad back and it was Ramsay's fault that this was even necessary, but he hadn't thought about any of that.  This was just something that Ramsay was asking him to do, and he was asking nicely, so Theon thought that he had better agree.  Had agreed without even thinking about it.  

Now, though, he was wondering all those things, and he was thinking.

Not about Ramsay.

About Robb.

He and Robb used to sleep together, tangled up in the same bed, so close together that they would have to throw the covers to the floor because it was so hot.  They were always scared, always had the sense that they were doing something wrong or that they were making something between them shift, but that hadn't stopped them.  There had never been any question about it, just Robb grabbing him by the hand and Theon falling down to the mattress, both of them staring at the door in case someone might come bursting through.

(Not that they could.   Theon always gets up right before they fell asleep to shove a chair underneath the doorknob, stack it high with books so only Jon or Ned would be strong enough to shove it open.  Robb had always looked angry after he did it, but never stopped him, just held his arms out when Theon came back to bed, burrowing his head into the crook of Theon's neck and knotting his hands around his shirt.)

With Robb it was better, but Robb wasn't here.  Theon turned over, punched the cushions like that might make them more comfortable, and then threw himself back down, all the while barely daring to breathe, afraid that he had somehow woke Ramsay out and he would come screaming, would drag Theon to the ground and teach him what happens when he wakes Ramsay up in the middle of the night, but nothing happens, other than the fact that Theon was more miserable than ever.

 

 

3.

"Your poetry sucks."  Ramsay is eating of cereal.  Theon is writing, and he freezes like a deer caught in the headlights, opens his mouth to retaliate but then clamps it shut, because  _no, it doesn't_ was about to slip free, and he was not allowed to disagree with Ramsay.  Bad things happen when someone disagrees with Ramsay.  "You should stop writing it."

"It's nothing," Theon said, his heart hammering away in his chest, because he had given up a lot to make this work and never even complained, but he does not think that he would be able to give up this.  "Just a bit of fun."

"No, it isn't."  Ramsay gets down from the stool and comes to stand behind him, peering down over his shoulder.  He quotes what Theon had been  writing in a high, clear voice, mocking, and this is so different than the Ramsay that had once given him a journal for Christmas.  "You think you're good.  That people want to read it."

Theon doesn't really know what to say, just knows that he wants to defend himself and that he isn't possibly allowed to do that.  

"But you're wrong."  Ramsay picks up the journal and Theon almost clings to it before realizing that that isn't an option, either.  "No one wants to read this."

"Robb did."  The words pass out of his mouth before Theon has a chance to think about them, but he is so tired- tired of trying to be everything Ramsay needs, tired of ducking out of the way of his anger, tired of sleeping on a god damn couch- and he thinks that the sudden flash in Ramsay's eyes is worth it, if only if it will be break in the monotony.  "He read everything I wrote."

"Robb was just trying to be nice.  And he ended up leaving you behind, didn't he?  So maybe his opinion doesn't count for much."  He throws the journal back onto the table, carelessly, and Theon scrambles to catch it.  "But me?"  The words are hot against the skin of his neck, and Theon jumps when Ramsay bites down, the only visible sign that it might have hurt him.   "I'm always going to tell you the truth.  I'm always going to be here to help show you how things really are. That's love, Theon. You may not know it," Ramsay steps away from him and only then can Theon breathe a sigh of relief.  "But that's what love is."

 

 

 

4.

Three days later and Ramsay shoves his phone into Theon's hands.

"Look."  Ramsay is smiling.   "I thought you might want to know."

Theon doesn't look right away, just stares at him.  Theon wasn't allowed to touch his phone.  It was one of the first rules that he had learned when they were together, one that quickly escalated- don't touch the phone, but I can go through your phone anytime I want, if you don't let me you might be hiding something.  Give me the password to your phone.  Get rid of your Instagram and your facebook and snapchat, and then log them back in on my phone, so I can know who you hang around with when you aren't with me.

It's how Ramsay found the picture, Theon thought.  The Instagram.  Robb would never let Ramsay follow him, but blocking Theon was something that never would have occurred to him.  Robb was never good at being petty.

"He made a friend."  Ramsay was still smiling.  "Isn't that sweet?"

Theon stared, and kept his face carefully blank, not able to figure out what response Ramsay is expecting to come from this, just knows that a wrong step could mean that this could turn very bad, very fast.  There, on his phone, is a picture of Robb and another boy that Theon had known from school.  A boy that, if he remembered correctly, had once shoved Robb into a row of lockers and that Theon had beat up, and had once found Robb having a panic attack in the bathroom and threatened to shove his head down the toilet.  Theon had beaten him up for that, too.

 _Seems like I'm not the only one desperate for someone to love me,_ he thinks, and feels almost vindicated, but then he reads the caption and doesn't think being right is worth it.   _Happy one month,_ Robb had wrote, and Theon felt the swooping sensation in his stomach that always happens before he gets sick.

 _He's only doing this because of you,_ Theon thought, and the idea makes him angry.   _If you were there he wouldn't be bothering with someone like him._

"Nice."  Theon tried to keep his voice calm, but it sounded funny.  A bit higher than normal, but at least he didn't sound jealous.  "They look good together."

"See?"  Ramsay said, instead of commenting, and slides the picture over to show the three other photos that Theon had not looked at.  "Turns out that he doesn't want you, after all."

 

 

 

5.

Theon gets up, grabs his journals, and moves into the room that Ramsay calls his office, even though he doesn't do any work.

There's a printer, and his laptop, and a folding chair thrown up against the wall.  A set of weights stacked in the corner.  And behind the desk, covered in dust, was a shredder.

It wakes Ramsay up, and he comes down to investigate, but Theon isn't afraid.  This isn't him breaking the rules.  This is Theon giving in, doing anything it takes to stay.

"Theon," Ramsay said, his sing song voice rising and lilting and then crashing in the middle of the room, loud in the sudden silence left in the absence of the shredder.  "What are you doing?"

Theon didn't answer, just turned the shredder over and emptied it into one of the trash bags he had brought down with him, then takes another notebook off the top of the stack and starts ripping, trying not to flinch at the sound.  Normally, not answering a question would make Ramsay angry, but today, Theon doesn't have to worry about it.  He knows that Ramsay is smiling.

This is what he wanted, after all, and Ramsay always gets what he wants.


	30. Chapter 30

i.

When the phone rings, Theon isn't expecting there to be bad news.  People generally aren't afraid of phone calls that come in at four in the afternoon, and even though Theon now had to deal with the ever present spike in anxiety when he answered the phon, on the off chance that it might be Ramsay ( _or, even worse, someone that Ramsay would not approve him talking to_ ), he hadn't expected it to be bad news- in the stories, bad news always come at night, and they're always trailed by some flowery imagery about the sound of the phone slicing apart the silence, but here, now, there was nothing important, just Theon standing in the kitchen with his too long sweatpants dragging on the ground behind him, cursing as he answers because he had burnt his thumb on the pan in his rush to reach his phone lying on the counter.

"Hello?"  Theon doesn't answer, but he's still keeping up a garbled string of searing as he turns the faucet on full blast to run cold water on the burn, and he's just about to apologize when the person on the other end breaks in again.  "Theon, is that you?"  The voice sounds familiar but far away, stuffy, like there's a bad phone conntion, and their name is right there at the front of his mind, but-, "It's me.  Asha."

Asha.  Definitely someone that he should have recognized.  Definitely someone that Ramsay would not approve of him talking to.  "Asha?"  He could only repeat what people say now, it seems, with no original thoughts of his own.  It was safest that way.  "What's the matter?"

He asks it because something had to be wrong, for her to be calling, and suddenly he's grippedith a stab of fear that something had happened to his mother, and another punch of worry that sends him scrambling to turn the stove top off and move to sit down, because it occurs to him that he has not heard an update on his mother for a while.  Or about his father, for that matter, and both of them were only hanging on to their respective sanities when he left, so he can't imagine there could have been any improvement.  He knows that it's something bad not from the sound of her voice, which was scratchy and cracking and not at all filled with the cool competence that he had begun to associate with his sister, but from the fact that she had blocked her number on the caller ID so Theon would actually pick up.  

Still, he's not that worried.  He's thinking that whatever she's about to say will be about him, something whose impact he could absorb on his own without it touching other people. 

"It's the Starks.  Ned," And he's gripped with another kind of fear, then, the kind that has become unfamiliar with the past few months, one that stretches past the immediate concerns of whether or not he was making Ramsay angry, and one that throws him back to when he was a much younger Theon and Robb was on the other end of the phone, telling him about Bran.  "He died.  This morning.  They found him in the car-,"

Her words come in one tidal wave then, an explanation that he barely hears because of the rushing in his ears, and Theon is very glad that he had thought to sit down.  He's even more glad that Ramsay wasn't here when the phone call came. 

"The funeral is set for Thursday," She adds, after they had said everything that needed to be said, after he asked her how it happened and she said that the police were still investigating, after he had asked about the Stark family and Asha said that it wasn't her place to pry, after he had confirmed that no, Ramsay was not there.  "You'll come, won't you?"  There's silence stretching between both of them, and when she speaks again, she is not sad at all, just angry, angry entirely at him and not at all about Ned.  It must be frustrating for her, to keep loving a family that could do nothing but prove to be a failure, that could be nothing but weak.  "Theon."  Another beat of silence.  "Robb needs you to come."

His name works, just like she knew that it would, and Theon bites down at his lip, plucks at his shirt so he could see the bruises blooming on his collar bone, and wonders how much he would have to give to get Ramsay to agree to this.  But it didn't matter.  He would pay whatever price it took - this is for the Starks.

"Of course I'll come," He says, already wondering whether or not his good suit will even fit anymore and a million other details that he would have to sort out.  "Of course I will."

 

 

 

ii.

In his head, there's a sort of check list, even though Theon hasn't the slightest clue how it got there.

He emails his professors, calls one of his coworkers from the café and gets her to agree to pull doubles all week so he could miss work without getting in trouble.  He makes a casserole and then lets it cool, makes another one, sticks them both in the freezer so they would last Ramsay while he was gone.  He feeds the dog, arranges for the neighbor girl across the hall to take her for her afternoon walk, and by the time Ramsay gets home, he's throwing things haphazardly in the suit case, not sure what he needs to bring.  It's not exactly a regular trip home.

( _It would seem strange to him later, how effective he was, considering how upsetting the news had been, but Theon knows.  Knows that Asha saying Robb needed him had worked as a balm for whatever ache he himself had feeling, had cleared that roaring rush in his head until he was able to at least work his way through the motions, like if he could just get this done, if he could just convince Ramsay to let him go and then get there, then he would let himself fall apart.  He would let himself be strong for Robb, and then they would fall apart together, and maybe things would be okay._ )

"What are you doing?"  Ramsay stands in the door, and if Theon had energy to waste on being anxious, he would have noticed how he was blocking the door, but he doesn't.  He had to get out of here.  "Somewhere to be?"

Theon doesn't answer.  "Have you seen my dress shoes?  The good pair without the rip in the side?"  He did have two pairs, but then Ramsay's dog had chewed it.  Theon had gotten angry, and then Ramsay had made very clear that the only one who was able to yell at that dog was him, which was so unfair that Theon didn't even want to think about it.  "I'm going to need them."

He reaches over to pick up the dress shirt that he had pulled out of the drawer and lain on the floor beside him, only to find that Ramsay was standing on it.  He's looking down at Theon the same way that Theon imagines that little boys looked at butterflies right before they tore the wings off.  

"Why?"

"Ned Stark died."  The words make something twinge in his chest, and Theon rocks back on his heels until he's sitting in a crouch.  Theon wonders if not directly stating that it was Robb's father would be considered a lie.  He hopes not.  Ramsay hates liars.  "The funeral is in two days, it's an eight hour drive."

Ramsay is still just staring at him.  "Why do you need to be there?"

"Because they need me," He says, which is probably not the right answer.  Ramsay doesn't like it when Theon needs someone that isn't him.  "And I want to be there.  Ned was like a father to me."

"And me?"  Ramsay steps forward, and with him standing and Theon still crouching, the threat is clear.  Theon wonders if it's his fault that the imbalance between them is so easily showcased or if Ramsay is just good at showing other people how small they can really be.  "Don't I need you?"

"Well," Theon can feel himself bending.  "They need me, too."

There's silence, long and stretching, and Theon has the absurd feeling that he's walking on a tight rope and about to fall at any moment.  Ramsay still hasn't either accepted or denied it, so Theon stands, shoves the rest of his clothes into the suitcase in a way that will definitely make it wrinkled and edges his way out the door.

He makes it all the way to the elevator.  Theon relaxed as soon as he made it out to the hallway, because even if he knows he will be punished for it later, at least he was going to go.

"Stop."  Ramsay is standing out in front of the door, the dog circling around and around his heels, and Theon jerks to a halt on command.  "Get back in here."  Theon wavers and Ramsay smiles, and he knew with a sickening jolt in his stomach that Ramsay never was going to let him leave without a fight, that this was just another game to him, that he knew how much more disgusted with himself Theon would be if he got this close to leaving and then turned back.  "If you go," Theon is already starting to walk back to him, already wondering how he turned into this much of a coward without noticing that it was happening.  "You can't come back.  And we don't want that, do we?"

Theon doesn't, and Ramsay knows it.  

There's only another second of hesitation before he turns back to him, and when Ramsay shuts the door behind them both, the sound of it closing is impossibly final.

 

 

iii.

He finds the whole story out from their weekly newsletter.

It's something that Theon is fairly certain is unique to his school alone, where everyone from each graduating class reports their own updates to someone who had been appointed to monitor their grade's section of the report, and by the end of the week, there's a nice outline of everyone's information, about birthdays and vacations and awards, new jobs and changes of location and break ups and engagements, and, god forbid, even a few babies, all of it organized by graduating year and last name.  Not everyone sends things in, but most everyone Theon knows had put their email in on the mailing list, so now every Monday without fail the update appears in his inbox.

This time it is a Tuesday, and it is a special edition all about Ned, written by Jeyne Westerling.

 Theon skims it, the nausea building with each line he reads, and by the end of it, he had slipped out of bed and onto the floor.   _Eddard Stark...  father of six, married to Catelyn Stark...  attorney practice....  found dead in his car this morning....  gun shot wound to the head....  no leads... police have no comment on whether it was personal or a robbery gone wrong... funeral on Thursday... in lieu of flowers you can make donations to...  will be missed_.

It's a good piece of writing.

Theon can't help but think that if things were different, he would have been the one to write it.

 

 

iv.

The day of the funeral, Ramsay keeps the door locked and bolted.

Theon takes the threat for what it is and stays put.

 

 

v.

He gets another phone call.

It's three days after the funeral that Theon did not attend, and comes in at one in the morning, like someone had been thinking about it and decided to dial his number on impulse.  He had learned his lesson from his sister, so Theon stares at it for a moment before picking up, figuring that since Ramsay wasn't here, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"Theon?"  Unlike his sister, this voice is immediately recognizable.  "Is that you?"

"Jon."  The name comes out as a whisper, a breath, and the sense of calm that he had felt as he was packing leaves him now, and Theon seems to deflate in on himself.  "It's me."

"Robb tried to call you."  The sound of Robb's name is like a knife in his ribs, stuck fast and twisting.  "It didn't go through.  He said not to bother trying, but-," Jon chokes off, gasping, and Theon can hear the dull pounding of his fist into the wall before he talks again, his breathing sharp and ragged.  "I thought you should know.  Dad-," He had never heard Jon refer to him as dad before.  He always called him  _Ned,_ or  _my father,_ like that amount of familiarity wasn't allowed for someone who wasn't Catelyn's son as well.  "He died."  Another punch.  "Somebody killed him."

There is nothing good to say to that.

"I know," is what Theon ends up going with.  "Asha called."  Stupid.  "I'm so sorry."

He was sorry, and the fact that Jon seemed to know that it was true was probably the only thing keeping him from hanging up.

"The funeral was Thursday."  There's blame there.  "You weren't there."

"I couldn't.  I,"  _I wasn't allowed, he told me if I went I couldn't come back, I have no where else to go if I don't come back,_ "I had things to do."

"Right.  Things."  There's an underlying note of disbelief, like he couldn't believe that Theon hadn't come up with something better.  "It's okay."

"It's not-,"

"It's not," Jon agrees, surprisingly amiable considering the conversation.  "But that's not why I'm calling.  It's about Robb."

Theon has the same swooping sensation that happens every time someone mentions Robb, like he was suddenly in free fall.  He had to clear his throat twice before he could answer.  "What about him?"

"He's not doing good."  On the other side of the phone, Theon could picture Jon, just as young and surly and angry as he had been when Theon last saw him, standing at the edge of house in the mulch to ensure that he wouldn't be overheard and staring up at his older brother's window, feeling the impossible ties of family and wanting what's best for them, even though Jon had spent much of the time Theon had known him insisting that he didn't belong.  "I mean, of course he's not, but even before."  Jon's  _scared,_ Theon realizes, and that scares him, too, because Jon can be angry and Jon can be unfair and unkind and all number of things, but he was always unfailingly steady, someone to ground all the rest of them.  "It's his anxiety thing, and with dad, and trying to take care of mom and all of us," It was the first time that he had referred to Catelyn as any kind of mother, and Theon wondered how many things had changed without him getting to be there to see it.  "I know you aren't talking.  I know he's angry with you.  But you always knew what to do.  I never did."  There's a note of pleading in his voice.  "I can't do this without you, Theon.   _Please._ "   He would give Asha a run for his mother in the guilting.  "Come home."

Theon wants to.  He imagines it, grabbing his phone and walking right out the door, but then all he could think about was Robb slamming the door in his face and then him being faced with no where to go. As terrible as it was, Ramsay was his lifeline, his home.  Theon had made his choices and now he was going to have to deal with it. 

"I can't."  Theon's voice sounded wrecked.  "You know that I can't."

"Because of him?"  Jon's voice is a growl.  "I can take care of him, you don't have to be afraid of him.  Just come back to us."

"I love him."

"You love  _Robb._ He loves you.  You loved us, once."  The words fall out of the phone like punches.  "And I know you loved my father.  Do you really think that he would want you to abandon us like this?  For someone like Ramsay?"

Hearing his name scares him, reminds Theon that he could be walking through the door at any moment, reminds him that he is breaking the rules.  And he knows better than to break the rules.

"I  _can't,_ " He repeats, and it comes out as a sob.  "I'm sorry."  Another sob.  "I'm so sorry."

"Yeah," Jon says, and he sounds like a little kid, like he had expected Theon to be there to catch him and couldn't understand why he was lying on the ground.  "You said."

 

 

 

vi.

 _I just want to make you proud,_ Theon had said once, and Ned had smiled at him, put his arm around him, held him up instead of knocking him down like a father should.

 _I already am,_ and those words had saved Theon's life even if Ned hadn't known it, had been the only thing that kept him pushing forward for a long time.   _You don't have to prove anything to me._

Theon wonders, if he had the chance to ask him, if he would still be saying the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY 2019!!!

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Blood and Water](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13845777) by [Kiss_Me_Im_Pie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiss_Me_Im_Pie/pseuds/Kiss_Me_Im_Pie)




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